Written Word

Oh, the Love of God!

The post below is essentially the same post I wrote February 22 of this year, (God Will Be to You What You Choose Him to Be); but it has significant changes. In the present post I am speaking both to you and to myself, trying to get us both to see what we really cannot see as the humans we are. But there is the truth out there – and I want us both at least to sense it – that God loved mankind with a powerful, self-sacrificing love, which, even though we cannot know the fullness of it, we should be continually aware of the unimaginable scope of the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ. It is awesome; it is indescribable.

God Will Be to You What You Choose Him to Be

I had started to write “God Will Be to You What You WANT Him to Be,” but there is a significant difference between what you want God to be and what you choose Him to be. It seems highly unlikely that anyone would want God to be contrary and vengeful,  but if you continue to make wrong choices in life, that is precisely the kind of God you will eventually get. And you will not like that God. In fact, you will be terrified out of your mind by that God.

I have lately been engrossed in the biblical book of Revelation. It is a book unlike any other in the Bible. It is a book smelling of fire and smoke and brimstone, a book bulging at the seams with the terrible wrath of God. It is a book containing the awful and awesome accounts of the judgments of God. God will pour the judgments out upon men and women who had the audacity to defy Him and scorn His love that endured the agonies of hell for a horrendous moment that they might have the more abundant life forever.

The previous sentence, however, that treats of the judgments of God, has in it the very reason you will be judged one day without mercy. It will be because you dared to ignore the tremendous, impossible sacrifice God (in Jesus) made for you. You have in effect spat on the love of Jesus and continually ignored and rejected the terrible suffering He endured so that you might be saved and have eternal life.

God doesn’t want to hurt you in any way; He wants only the best for you. But what about you: how do you feel about God? It seems that you could not care less about the love of God or sacrifice or excruciating pain or Jesus’ dying of a broken heart. You are worthy of the lowest and vilest hell; but so have we all been before we accepted the salvation that Jesus purchased for us with His own blood. If you or I or any depraved, despicable sinner (which we all are without Jesus) dares to turn his back on such supreme love and exquisitely painful sacrifice, any one of us deserves whatever fate awaits him.

Jesus was divinity in a body, and because He was, 1) He loved more than we mortals can possibly grasp in our limited minds, 2) He sacrificed more for us than we could possibly sacrifice for Him as He had infinitely more assets, even as the human Jesus, than we have, and 3) Jesus suffered more than we could ever suffer for the reason we have stated: He was divine and each lash of the scourge, each pounding of the nails into His hands and feet tore at Him not only physically but emotionally. Jesus was God! and need not have, nor should have, suffered as He did at the hands of the creature He loved.

If you are not saved, have you ever seriously thought about what you are doing? Have you at any time pondered the irony of a God of all creation pleading with you – whose breath is in your nostrils – to come to Him when He actually doesn’t need you? What can you give God that He does not already have? What can you possibly contribute to Him who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and the earth and the fullness thereof, and a trillion galaxies and wondrous objects in the cosmos of which we have not even dreamed?

This writing is both an appeal and a warning: It is an appeal for you to come to Christ NOW, while you have the opportunity. It is a warning that your time is fast running out, and when it does – the horrible judgments of God will overtake you and it will then be too late to accept Christ. He will then turn His back on  you.

A Birthday Thank You and a Reminder: It Ain't Over Yet

With this post I want to say a great THANK YOU! to all my friends and well-wishers who have sent me birthday greetings by phone, by email and by Pony Express. A special warm thanks goes to Faith Covenant Church of Jesus Christ (pastor Mark Moore Sr.) for the phoned in, on-the-spot group rendition of A Happy Birthday to You – the refurbished arrangement that I like so well.

Now I want to bend your ear (or your eyes) for a short while with this little memo:

Life Is Never Over Until It’s Over

Usually a person waits until the signal birthday years (30’s, 40’s, 80’s, 90’s) to dramatically look back over the years of their life and make an assessment of said life. I have decided not to wait until I am 90 years old; at 89 I am not sure how many years are left to me. Today is the best time to make my assessment of what I have done right and what I have done wrong and what I have failed to do. In doing this, my aim is not to praise myself nor to deprecate myself although God and you and the devil know there is way too much blame that rightfully belongs to li’l ol’ me. Yet praising or blaming myself or anyone else is not quite what God wantsn at this time. So I’ll put all that aside and, while still assessing my life, show how the mercy and grace and love of God have shone like a beacon through all of the conglomerate mess. That is what God wants - whatever praise and glory can accrue to His name.

No one knows as I how gracious God has been to me. You may know for your own life, but you still don’t know – either quantitatively or qualitatively – all of the little and the great things God has done in my life. And most of what He has done the rest of the world knows but little, and if they did know, those things that are so marvelous and needful in my life would seem like ho-hum stuff to them. Nevertheless they are all great, I daresay even life-saving, to me.

God has reached low to save me and He has reached high to keep me saved. He reached low into the depths of sin and plucked me out of it and, contrariwise, He reached high, when I was great in  my own sight, to pull me down from that lofty dangerous perch and bring me back to a level plane, serving and worshiping Him. When I thought I was somewhat, God knew how to shake me like a dog would shake a rag doll in its mouth, and tumble me back down to the real world, in which I am just a speck of dust among billions of other specks of dust.

I guess the point is this: no matter my spiritual or emotional state, whether low or high, life is never over at that point. We are all in the ongoing process of being brought to the likeness of Christ. If God has done great things in us and through us, life is not over yet. If we have fallen from the grace and favor of God for the moment, life is not over yet. God is still working on us, in us and through us to perfect all of His will in our individual lives.

So – don’t rejoice too soon and overmuch when you have reached a mountaintop in your journey and don’t wallow overmuch in the muck of sin when you have temporarily been defeated – life is not over until it is over, and God is still on His throne watching over you whether in the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. Faith in Christ is the ultimate victory.