God’s Love Is Still The Heart of the Gospel
Why I Have to Revisit God’s Love Often
We’ve all heard “God loves you” over and over again, so why do I find I need to consistently fill up on His love in order to follow Him?
We Live in A Love/Hate/Hope/Depression/Good/Evil World
Our world is incredibly beautiful. Just stand on a beach and look out on the ocean, take a hike in the woods, observe parents with their new-born child. Beautiful!
On the other hand read a little history, a few articles, or cross someone’s political view and we’re quickly faced with significant doses of ugliness, cruelty, hate, or injustice.
We have a God who is love and light and good and just and holy, and our world carries a measure of that reality. But we also live in a world that has broken God’s life laws and as a result we experience various types of suffering.
I’ve found in my own journey, because I live in this kind of reality, I MUST regularly go back to the heart of the Gospel; that God really, really loves us and wants us to experience that love.
Gods Loves People
As part of my devotional time I read again recently one of the most famous passages in the Bible. Even many non-believers are at least familiar with the verse (if not it’s words). I know you know it as well and there is a good chance you can even quote it word for word….so can I.
Yet, as I slowly read it, along with the words right after it, I found those words filling me again with God’s Spirit and a freshness was breathed into my soul.
I would encourage you to read through these words slowly, prayerfully as well and see how they refresh your heart too.
John 3:16–18 “For God so LOVED the world….” A perfect, holy, sinless God actually loves the entire world. He loves every single person in every continent, of every language and culture, and skin color, age, and gender.
That means me too. The most powerful, wonderful, amazing Person in existence loves me!
“that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (16b-17)
Unscriptural traditions, God-hating philosophers, the pain of life, and the deadness of our spirit before we came to Christ, twist our understanding of why Jesus came.
God did not send Jesus into the world to judge us, but to save us!
Personalizing this in my own life, I meditated on those words again. God sent the Son, not to judge me, but to save me.
A holy, righteous God has to eventually judge the wrongs we all do, or He would not be just. But that is not His heart. God loves me enough that He sent Jesus, not to judge me, but to save me!
The name God chose to have, the name that would save us, the name that all of creation will eventually honor and bow down to is JESUS: God saves, or God is salvation.
“Thank you, Father, that you loved ME enough to humble yourself and somehow squeeze into the skin of one person. You are showing me what you’re like in the clearest way possible and then doing what is necessary to save me from my sin!
Thank you, that you didn’t come to judge me but to save Me!”
As I prayed those words, fresh life, thankfulness, and hope filled my heart again.
(18) “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son.”
To a degree, our world is already living under a measure of God’s judgement. The wages of sin is death. The world is groaning under the death process that sin brought into the world. (Romans 8) Everyone suffers to some degree.
And the worst part is that all of us carry that death process in our own spirit until we are made new by the Holy Spirit. That is why earlier in this chapter Jesus said we have to be born again to see God’s kingdom and be born of water and spirit to enter God’s kingdom. (John 3:3–6)
The Only Solution
It’s still so interesting to me after all these years of being a Jesus follower that Jesus said judgment is taken away, not by me being good, but by believing.
The only solution for the rottenness and decay that impact all of our souls is faith in Jesus. I still have to remind myself that I don’t have right standing with God or eternal life because I did everything right today. I have eternal life simply because I have put my trust in Jesus to reconcile me with My Heavenly Father and put eternal life in my soul.
This too, is the love of God. I don’t have to be perfect, something I could never do. I don’t have to pray 20 times a day, never think a bad thought, sacrifice everything I own to please God and receive eternal life.
I simply believe in Jesus as the only way to the Father and eternal life. (John 14:6) And because of that life, I progressively do the things that Jesus did.
What About All Those Other Religions?
Sometimes people say, “What about all those millions of people who have another religion? Are you so arrogant that you think yours is the only right one?”
I say, “Look at Jesus and read what He said. He’s the One who said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” John 14:6
Jesus is the One who said that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
Look at His life. Compare Him to anyone else in history. There is no religious leader, no figure in all of history who comes even close to Him in miracle working power, truth of His words, sacrificial love, or impact in human history.”
On this most important of all matters; eternal life….
God wanted to get rid of all the confusion. Make it super, super, super simple so everyone could receive His love and life.
Jesus is The Only Way to Eternal Life With God.
If there are lots of different options, how do we know which one is right or if any of them are?
God wanted to make it so clear and simple, even a small child can get it. Want eternal life, believe in Jesus.
I Need to Fill Up Often
Because of our fallenness, we humans pay more attention to bad news than good news. The networks and publishers are well aware of this, so most of the “news” they give us is bad news.
Years ago I decided to only check out the “news” in short amounts because it is incredibly biased and dominated by the rotten stuff happening in our world.
But even that can get to me on days when I’m having extra challenges and hardships. It was after one of those days that I read again John 3:16–18.
Those words gave me a fresh injection of faith, hope, and love as I took a few moments to meditate on them, pray them, and personally receive them.
I realized again, I need consistent infusions of the love of God to overcome life’s challenges and keep my heart healthy and hopeful.
I pray those words fill you with a little more of God’s love and hope and joy as well.
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Want help clarifying and accomplishing your God-given purposes, check out www.MarkFurlongCoaching.com
