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? That simple question challenges the core of our belief system.
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’ (a depiction, description, explanation, interpretation, picture, and rendering). 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-Calvary’s Cross! Following is a snapshot of this fluid, seamless, ongoing intimate connection.
25 Abruptly Jesus broke into prayer: "Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. You've concealed your ways from sophisticates and know-it-alls, but spelled them out clearly too ordinary people. 26 Yes, Father, that's the way you like to work." 27 Jesus resumed talking to the people, but now tenderly. "The Father has given me all these things to do and say. This is a unique Father-Son operation, coming out of Father and Son intimacies and knowledge. No one knows the Son the way the Father does, nor the Father the way the Son does. But I'm not keeping it to myself; I'm ready to go over it line by line with anyone willing to listen. 28 "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. 29 Walk with me and work with me - watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. 30 Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." This ‘scandalous’ intimacy is what kept Jesus!
The Scriptural Core of Apostle Paul’s understanding of Fathers love.
Ephesians chapter 1-3, Romans 5:8 and Colossians chapter 1-2, unveil the amazing simplicity of Paul’s teaching on the “Mystery” of the Gospel of Grace-which provides the connection to Father’s love. It is important to note that the “Gospel of Grace” is simple enough that any child or adult child can ‘get it.’ There are of course many other Scriptures that expose this “Mystery.”
Paul was instructed personally by the Risen and Glorified Lord Jesus in the Arabian Desert that his 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.
Ephesians 1:4-8 Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure. 6 So we praise God for the wonderful kindness he has poured out on us because we belong to his dearly loved Son. 7 He is so rich in kindness that he purchased our freedom through the blood of his Son, and our sins are forgiven. 8 He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. (Msg)
Ephesians 2:1-8 It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. 2 You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. 3 We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. 4 Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, 5 he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! 6 Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. 7 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. 8 Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! (Msg)
Ephesians 3:14-21 My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, 15 this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. 16 I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit - not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength - 17 that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, 18 you'll be able to take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! 19 Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. 20 God can do anything, you know - far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us. 21 Glory to God in the church! Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus! Glory down all the generations! Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes! (Msg)
Romans 5:8 But God demonstrate His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (NKJV)
Romans 5:8 But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. (Msg)
Colossians 1:13 He rescued us from the claim of darkness and ignorance and transferred us into the kingdom where the love of His son rules.
Colossians1:22 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.
Colossians1:26 This mystery was concealed for ages and generations but is now fully realized in our restored innocence before Him.
Colossians1:28 This is the essence and focus of our message; we awaken every man’s mind instructing every individual, bringing them into full enlightenment in order that we may exhibit the whole of mankind as perfect (without shortcoming and fully efficient) in Christ.
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)
Allow you to be swept up and immersed in this incredible, scandalous love of God!
Psalm 27:8 When my heart whispered, "Seek God," my whole being replied, "I'm seeking him!" (Msg)
Psalm 27:8 My heart has heard you say, "Come and talk with me." And my heart responds, "LORD, I am coming." (NLT)
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!
"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! "Here you come running, my lover to me."
Father, may our life be experienced from this day forward as a cataclysmic explosion of love between Your heart and ours! Thank You Papa!
“No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worry can change the future. No, it is only Father’s Love that sustains us as He did with His only Begotten Son Jesus.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASSHL6eWQO0&feature=share&list=RD02Xxe4M0bbwd8
Loving Father’s Love! Ron Ross
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