Pastor Dave’s message of this past weekend was about the
unconditional love God has for us. I’ve
believed in the unconditional love of God my entire Christian life. I’ve heard it preached my whole life, and
have even preached on it myself. Still,
as I set there this weekend and soaked in the Word I found myself overwhelmed
again “that God should love a sinner such as I.” In and of myself, I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t compute. The One who knows me best chose not to write
me off but to embrace me in His love.
Who would have thought it?
This weekend we reflected on Jesus’ story about a son and
how his journey took him far from home, left him wasted and worn, and then
after much pain and suffering turned him homeward only to find that his father
was waiting for him, longing for his return, hoping against hope that his son
would find his way home, thrilled that his son who had been lost was now found.
In the story the father represents God, and we see that God
is the God who doesn’t write us off but who opens wide His arms to receive us
to Himself. I feel like that
prodigal. I’ve made poor decisions and
acted in unbecoming ways. Sin found its
way into my heart and took control. Yet,
by a grace I don’t understand and a love that blows me away, God has never
walked out on me. He has never acted in
an unbecoming way to me. He has never
dropkicked me out into the darkness, leaving me to wander aimlessly. When I have wandered, and I have, it wasn’t
God’s doing. It was mine. When I came to my senses, like the prodigal
in Jesus’ story, and realized that it was my choices that led me to wander, I
discovered the up-side-down ways of God.
He loved me. He cared about
me. He wasn’t against me. He was for me. The poet got it right when he said of
God,
And now He takes me
to His heart a son.
He asks me not to
fill a servant’s place.
The “Far-off country”
wand’rings all are done.
Wide open are His
arms of grace.
Did you know the prodigal had a brother who had his own
issues? He didn’t like it much that the
father went easy on the run-away brother.
He didn’t like it at all, and made his feelings known. His argument went something like this, “I’ve
been here all the time. I didn’t reject
you and waste money on endless parties.
I stayed home and worked my heart out.
Why are you treating my brother with such extravagant love?”
The father gently reminded his second son that all he had
was there for him to use and enjoy. He said to him, “You have always been with me, and
all that is mine is yours” (Luke 15:31). The actions of the first son
and the attitude of the second son were their issues. The father loved them both through and
through, and in his heart there was always a place for them. His home was their home. He wasn’t the problem; he was their hope,
their place of safety, their father.
In this world we do seem to reap what we sow but we are
never outside the love of God. “For
God so loved the world,” is our proclamation (John 3:16). God’s Word to
all creation is, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you
with lovingkindness” (Jeremiah 31:3). When Paul was speaking to the
early church he said, “[T]he love of God has been poured out
within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans
5:5).
George Matheson’s song, written in 1882, reflects upon the
incredible love of God for us. In fact,
it is a response to God’s great love.
When we come to believe God really does love us, how should we
respond? Matheson said this,
O Love that wilt not
let me go,
I rest my weary soul
in thee;
I give thee back the
life I owe,
That in thine ocean
depths its flow
May richer, fuller
be.
If you are the child that ran away or the child that stayed
home, know this -- God loves you. In his
book, The
Knowledge of the Holy, A. W.
Tozer says
It is a strange and
beautiful eccentricity of the free God
that He has allowed
His heart to be emotionally identified with men…
Free as He is, He has
let His heart be bound to us forever.
Do you know what this means.
It means God loves you, and you can’t get out of it.
Forward Still,
Rick
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