Good Morning, Meetpastordan Readers…First, a quick update on Pam’s recovery from her stroke. Her speech is getting better day by day, and she struggles much less with her words. Her fine motor skills are still a challenge, but she has tests scheduled this week that will hopefully reveal a way to approach that issue. As I’m sure you already know, we are counting on God’s faithfulness to fulfill this promise: “I will restore your health and heal your wounds.” (Jeremiah 30:17) We’ve witnessed that before, and we confidently expect the same result in this case. Her spirit is positive and upbeat!
I struggled a bit with how I wanted to present the title for today’s blog. Did I want it to be a statement or a question? We are told in 1 John that “God IS Love!” (my edit) Notice it doesn’t say that He is “loving”. Love is not just an attribute of God; it is His very essence, the core of His being. He is the completeness and perfection of Love, as described in I Corinthians 13:4-7. Therefore, I am moving ahead with the assumption that that is understood by you, my wonderful readers. Since I asked it as a question, I obviously have a perspective, or perhaps perspectives, that I want to share.
I love these words in the first chapter of Ephesians because they reveal so much of God’s love. “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before He created the world, (and Man(kind), God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes. He decided in advance to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. This gave Him great pleasure... He is so rich in kindness and grace that He purchased our freedom with the blood of His Son and forgave our sins. He has showered His kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. Wow! Let’s take a minute and let all of that sink in.
Now, let’s look at all the attributes of love in just those few Scriptures:” blessed us”, “loved us”, “chose us to be holy and without fault”, “He adopted us by bringing us to Himself”, “rich in kindness and grace”, “purchased our freedom”, “forgave our sins”, “showered us with all wisdom and understanding”. Because God IS Love, only goodness, mercy, grace, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, acceptance, joy, peace and self-control emanate from Him. Anything else, such as pain, suffering, disease, depression, anxiety, guilt, shame, remorse, anger and hatred are rooted in the dark domain, satan’s kingdom.
Now to continue with the first chapter of Ephesians: “God has now revealed to us His “mysterious will” regarding Christ – which is to fulfill His own good plan. This is the plan: “At just the right time, He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ – everything in heaven and on earth. Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for He chose us in advance, and He makes everything work out according to His plan.”
Let’s recap a bit. Why did God create Man(kind)? We’re told in Genesis 1:26 that He created Man in His image for a relationship. (In fact, He gave Man the gift of free-will so we could choose to enter into that all-important relationship). And it is not just a here and now relationship, but an eternal relationship. And when did God make this decision? “Long ago, even before He created the world (and Man), God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes”. And what was God’s plan? “At just the right time, He will bring everything together under the authority of Christ…” And what was “just the right time”? Romans 5:6 answers that question. “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.” “Utterly helpless” is quite an indictment. It means that Man proved, without a shadow of a doubt, that we were incapable of saving ourselves.
Two paragraphs above tells us that “Because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God.” We are heir to this inheritance because Jesus paid our sin debt on the cross. These gifts include forgiveness of sin, which qualifies us for eternal life; the indwelling Holy Spirit, which empowers us to rise above our feelings, or our circumstances, to become the person God created us to be; we are grafted into His family as “a child of God”; we are now a Saint and no longer a sinner; we are heir to all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly realms, and we are heir to all the promises in the Bible. How’s that for hitting the spiritual jackpot?
So, one more question. “What does this whole scenario tell us about God’s majestic qualities…especially the quality of omniscience?” It reveals that, even before He created us, He looked into the future and saw that we were going to choose a different path than the one He originally intended. But still, even knowing that we were going to be problem children, HIS PLAN was to provide a Savior to save us from ourselves. But, in my mind, the most astounding part of the above scenario is this…He created us anyway, and without reservation. How’s that for unfathomable, never-ending, unconditional love?
To sum up what I’ve written so far, everything about the way God relates to us emanates from His love for us. This is confirmed by 1 John 4:19: “We love because He first loved us.” As we examine the manifestations of His love in the above paragraphs, it is easy to see how He has replaced our effort with Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. It is no longer about us working to earn God’s favor; Jesus already did the work on our behalf. All that is left for us to do is accept His Gift of Grace. Our eternal destiny hinges on that very choice.
When our time on this earth draws to a close, that all-important decision will determine whether we rise to eternal life, or whether we will be condemned to eternal separation from God. To repeat, the choice is OURS to make. I would like to close with John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son. Whoever believes in Him will not perish, but WILL have eternal life.” Thank you, God, for YOUR plan!
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May God Bless You abundantly,
Dan Presgrave (a.k.a. Pastor Dan)
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