I heard these truths in a message from Louie Giglio about 2 years ago and they have never left me and been a great source of strength. I hope they will be the same for you.
God Loves Us
Probably one of the most important truths to hear in hard times. It seems that when there are tears, when the pain runs so deep, when we lose someone close, when the darkness seems to overcome us, we tend to question if God really loves us. It is a natural reaction. “Why would you let this happen if you really loved me?”
Once we were totally spiritually lost. Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
And in being spiritually lost, we were enemies of God. Colossians 1:21 says, “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.”
Yet God loved us so much in the middle of being lost and enemies of God.
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Rom 5:8
Jesus Christ came into this world to rescue a world that had turned away from God, sought their own glory, and in doing so embraced their own sinful ways. And no amount of good works would earn someone heaven. God cannot be holy and not punish sin at the same time. (An earth judge would not be a good judge if he let everyone off the hook for living a moral life outside their screw ups- neither would God)
Lets say that me not being the best swimmer alive and Michael Phelps were on the Titanic and both of us ended up in freezing artic water. In that moment, it does not matter that he is the best swimmer on the planet or not, we are both in freezing artic water and both of us are dead within 5 minutes unless someone comes along in a life raft and rescues out of the dark and freezing water.
That is the Gospel of God’s Love for Us
Jesus came into this world and took all of the sin of the world upon Himself so that we could be made clean and brought into a right standing before God.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Cor 5:21
For us to become clean, He became dirty. So one day we will stand before God with a clean slate if we have placed our faith in Jesus Christ and cried out to Him to save us not from icy water, but from an eternity separated from Him. Good people don’t go to heaven. Forgiven people do.
God did not need to do this. We were enemies of God. We rebelled and rejected Him. YET….
He loves us so much that He came into this world, became sin to wash us white as snow, died on a Roman Cross, and came back to life three says later all to say in a statement louder than anything in creation:
I LOVE YOU.
The cross of Christ beyond a shadow of a doubt tells us that God loves us. In the hardest moments when we question God’s love, let the cross be a reminder that even if God fixed the hard moment we are in perfectly, it would not even come close to saying I LOVE YOU louder than the cross does.
for God
for People
for the Nations
for the Kingdom
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