Skip to main content

Love beyond what we deserve


It’s rare to find anything positive or encouraging in the news these days. Stories of murder, war, rape, genocide, sex trafficking, domestic violence, custody battles, kidnapping, celebrity divorce, and the like don’t exactly leave us with feelings of peaceful happiness. Rather, they leave us with feelings of anger, fear, and despair. For many, these images and stories just reinforce a belief that God cannot exist, and if He does He is a menacing tyrant with no love for humanity. 

But I see a very different world. I see a world where there exists a God who loves way beyond what humanity deserves. A world with a God who despite our hatred and maliciousness towards not only one another, but ourselves and the Creator-God who made us, chose to pay the penalty for our rebellious and destructive actions. Somehow in the midst of the destruction, hatred, selfishness, and depravity, God is quietly whispering, “While you were dead in your sins, I died for you” (Romans 5:8). And because love cannot be forced, it cannot be provoked, it must be freely chosen, He is heartbroken to say to the people He desperately loves and wants to redeem from their treachery, “I am giving You over to your depraved thinking” (Romans 1:28).

 And so, the violence and insanity that we witness is not proof that God does not love or that God does not care, it is proof that He is lovingly and patiently waiting for the world to receive what He offers: life to fullest; freedom from our chains of pain, addiction, and brokenness and that we constantly turning our back on Him and rejecting His beautiful grace, mercy, and salvation.  Our predicament is the result of our selfish will to continue in our sin instead of taking the hand of the One who has already provided a way out.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflections for Election Day

It's an unfortunate reality that not only does politics divide our country, it divides Christ's church. In this blog, I'm not going to try to persuade which candidate to vote for, but rather I am going to attempt to urge any and all professing believers to vote responsibly. If you are voting (and I hope that you are) I encourage you to prayerfully consider your decision. I encourage you to use divine discernment in which candidate you mark your ballot for. Please, do not simply vote for the candidate that most benefits what your itching ears want to hear, but rather prayerfully invest in the candidate that will uphold God's standards in his leadership of this nation. Like Israel, the Christian community in America has fallen into the trap of relying on political structures to provide for our needs and even our desires. In 1 Samuel 8, we find that Israel has grown tired of the Judges and Priests that God has given to advise them and demands that they have a king. Sam...
Post a Comment
Read more

Don't Get Comfortable

It’s a running joke among my co-workers that I never stay in town on weekends I’m not working. I guess it’s not so much a joke as it is reality. The truth is: I love to travel and get restless staying in one place very long. I was pondering this on a recent trip back from visiting my parents in Mississippi for Thanksgiving. Since leaving New York to attend college in Indiana, I’ve struggled with settling anywhere and really making a place “home”. This especially became difficult most recently when I moved from Lexington, Kentucky, where I had really established a great church family—to move to Macon, Georgia responding to the call God has placed on my life. I remember having some very emotional moments with Jesus in the midst of the move and shortly after. It seems like every time I get comfortable somewhere God shakes things up and moves me somewhere new. God revealed something to me on my drive back from Mississippi about this; Christians are not supposed to get comfortable....
Post a Comment
Read more

Faith Stories

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not depend on your own understanding." Proverbs 3:5 "But I am not ashamed of it [the Gospel], for I know the One in whom I trust, and I am sure that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until the day of His return." - The apostle Paul from prison, 2 Timothy 1:12 For anyone growing up in a Christian context, Proverbs 3:5 is a well quoted verse. In my own life, I often find myself quoting it to give myself comfort in frustrating and uncertain circumstances or find others in my life quoting it to me for the same intention. Honestly, however, very rarely does it give me true comfort nor do I find myself truly focusing on letting the meaning of it sink it. In the Christian community it has almost become a cliche; a pat answer Christians give others and themselves when they are facing a trying situation they can't make sense of. But I do not believe this was God's intention in giving us this truth in Hi...
Post a Comment
Read more