A friend shared this mind blowing, yet simple truth about God’s love. He posed the following question: do you know that God loves you as much as He loves Himself? Do you love yourself as much as God does? That simple question challenges the core of our belief system. The very essence of God’s love calls us to love the very ones that He sent His Son to die for!
Our Identity, Our Perspective, Our Understanding, Our Spirituality, Our Senses (physically and spiritually), Our Cultural Nuances, Our Oikos (sphere of influence: family of origin, family of choosing, friends, and ‘near ones’) all of who we are, are in desperate need of Father’s Love Expose’ (which is a depiction, description, explanation, interpretation, picture, and rendering of His unique love.)
We cannot survive this world apart from Fathers love! Jesus was able to live the exemplary sinless life as the Son of Man. But I believe the Scriptures reveal that it was His moment by moment connection with Father that was his daily source of Grace. This intimate (scandalous in the eyes of religion) relationship propelled him into his destiny as the Son of Man-Calvary’s Cross!
Paul was instructed personally by the Risen and Glorified Lord Jesus in the Arabian Desert that this ‘Mystery’ hidden for the ages and now unveiled in the Gospel of Grace is the open door into experiencing His Father’s incredible and scandalous love. This scandalous love invites us into adoption as His beloved Sons and Daughters; whom He will bring to fullness, maturity and glory! Do you realize what this means to you and me? Let’s discover together just a peek into His scandalous love.
“He accomplished this in dying our death in a human body; He fully represented us in order to fully present us in blameless innocence face to face with God again, with no sense of guilt, suspicion, regret or accusation; all charges against us are officially cancelled.1:23 Remain under the influence of what your faith knows to be true about you; firmly consolidated in the foundation of your belief, so that nothing can distract you from the expectation of the Gospel.” Col. 1:22-23 (Mirror Translation)
Father’s scandalous love; unveiled so gloriously in Christ, calls us to “define ourselves radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.” (Brennan Manning) Further, as his adopted, chosen and beloved, we can know with absolute certainty that “God does not love us because Christ died for us, Christ died for us because God loves us.” (Phil Drysdale)
Jesus still seeks out and spends time with the 'unloved' and what the world and religion call the 'unlovely.' Tell me, who has the right or authority to Judge God's beloved children as 'unlovely?'
Tragically, there are 'unloved.' Religion and the evil one are constantly trying to give the illusion that certain persons or even people groups are somehow, ‘less than’ or ‘flawed’ and thus sentenced to the religious prison of the ‘unlovely’. How utterly false and evil to the core! God forbid!
It falls to us too be Jesus to them and embrace them with His UN diluted and eternally unconditional love discovered only in the message and ‘Mystery’ of Grace!
"Grace doesn't sell; you can hardly even give it away, because it works only for losers and no one wants to stand in their line. The world of winners will buy case lots of moral advice, grosses of guilt-edged prohibitions, skids of self-improvement techniques, and whole truckloads of transcendental hot air. But it will not buy free forgiveness because THAT threatens to let the riffraff into the Supper of the Lamb." R.F. Capon in "Parables
Be loved by the greatest of all lovers; Jesus! Pray with me: Father, may my life be experienced from this day forward as a cataclysmic explosion of love between your heart in and through ours! “No amount of guilt can change your past and no amount of worry can change the future. No, it is only Father’s Love that sustains us as He did His only Begotten Son Jesus.”
Loving Father’s Love! Ron Ross
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