Perhaps we have all “loved too much” the fact that God loves us—
too in love with His mercy and His omnipotence:
that our sins can be forgiven,
that we may pray for anything we wish,
because God is the One who answers prayer,
because God is the One who loves us…
These are all doctrinally correct statements.
Yet we often interpret and “receive” these truths from our own standpoint and needs—
isn’t this exactly how the prosperity gospel works?
But this is wrong,
because while God loves us in such an unreasonable, incomprehensible way,
do we love God back in an equally unreasonable, wholehearted way?
Today’s Sunday message began with the original sin of Adam and Eve
and restated the gospel:
that God sacrificed His only begotten Son to save sinners.
But have I been satisfied merely to be saved and forgiven,
to simply “thank” God?
Yes—at Christmas time, I am often nothing more than that.
But today the Holy Spirit touched me,
allowing me to feel what it is like
to sacrifice one’s beloved child in order to redeem others,
just like the “Bridge Operator Story” (the love that gives its life).
I could not hold back my tears, because I finally understood:
This is how God felt when He sent Jesus to be the sacrificial Lamb!
And I—
I have hardly ever responded to God’s immeasurable love
with the pure love of a true child of God.
Jabez is autistic,
and caring for him indeed consumes most of my time and energy.
Yet the pure love he gives me overflows,
and I respond to him with the same purity.
Through this relationship,
God has actually been revealing to me
that this is how He wants my relationship with Him to be:
He simply wants me to love Him.
I once described Jabez’s love as
“a fierce, unreasonable love.”
When he needs me, he wants no one else.
In that moment, I feel a unique, irreplaceable sense of being loved.
Before God, in this kind of “fierce and unreasonable” purity,
I have to admit—I fall short compared to Jabez.
Thanks be to God,
who loved us even while we were still sinners.
And thanks be to the Holy Spirit for today’s revelation:
as I reflected on Jesus’ words on the cross,
“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
I understood that it came from the deep love
shared between the Father and the Son.
When Jesus bore the agony of sin,
the perfect closeness He had always enjoyed with the Father
was torn open by the weight of human sin.
That cry was a raw, instinctive outpouring of pain.
And the Father turning His face away
was also an act that caused Him immeasurable suffering—
all because of love.
How blessed we are to be called children of God.
How can we not love Him deeply, deeply, deeply?