Does God love everyone?
Jun0
God not only loves everyone, but He loves all of us with the same fervor with which He loves Jesus!!! Jesus Himself tells us that “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in my love” (John 15:9)!
Isn’t this excellent!?! There is nothing we can do to fall out of the love of God. He can’t love us more and He can’t love us less. His love is already at full saturation for us whether or not we know Him or have pursued a relationship with Him!
We may not always feel like He likes us (let alone loves us), but this is a lack of perspective on our part. God sees us within an eternal perspective: He knows where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going. So, we can’t let our circumstances convince us that God doesn’t care. God does allow us (and in some cases, causes us) to go through difficult circumstances in order to expose our weaknesses that we might cry out to Him. He wants a relationship with us. He wants to be a Father to us. And because He knows the eternal consequences for our choices, He will do whatever it takes to shake us now so that when eternity comes we might receive His full blessing.
God is Love; What is Love?
Jun0
The Bible says that God is Love (1 John 4:8, 16). The Greek word for this particular kind of love is ‘agape’ meaning ‘unconditional love’–a love without cause. But we know the pure essence of this love can’t be found in earthly language (even Greek!) because it’s representing a spiritual entity, so the better place to find what this means is in the rest of the scriptures.
Song of Solomon 8:6 says that love is as strong as death, it’s jealousy as severe as Sheol, and its flashes are flashes of fire–the very flame of the Lord! Love is the flame of the Lord! This is a pretty intense Love!! We should be praying into this! It’s also interesting that love and jealously go together! (The Lord’s jealousy, by-the-way, is like ‘passion’ and ‘zeal’, rather than ‘envy’ or ‘covetousness’.)
The Lord, being Love, is jealous for our hearts!! He will never stop pursuing and refining us because He wants ALL of us!
In Hosea, the prophet Hosea is told by God to marry a prostitute. She keeps running away from him, and even bears another man’s child, but Hosea continues to chase her and bring her back. This is the same love that our Lord shows, and, in fact, Hosea’s story is a living demonstration of God’s love for the Jewish people who He chose and will never forsake.
But whether Jewish or not, God has this same burning desire for all people. God will do whatever it takes to get our attention (just as a suitor who is passionately wooing his beloved). Unfortunately this also means that if our attention is set on another (any fleshly love or secular pursuit), then He may have to get our attention in a way that’s uncomfortable to us–not because He doesn’t love us, but because He DOES!
We can’t make our own love…
Jun0
Jeremiah is probably my favorite prophet. As I was reading his words, I got caught on this verse: Jeremiah 24:7 says, “I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the Lord; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart” (emphasis mine).
The most important word here is that second ‘for’; it means ‘because’. The Lord promises that IF the people return to Him with their whole hearts, then He will GIVE them a heart to know Him. This is huge. Only the Lord can give us the perfect Love to love Him with, and yet loving Him is the first commandment (Deut 6:4-5; Mark 12:28-29)! We must absolutely return to the Lord with all our hearts!
This blog addresses the 'sticky' topics of Western Christianity in an attempt to shake, refocus, and unite the body of Christ, and to reveal the true gospel message to unbelievers.
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