"...Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back." Isaiah 38:17
How seriously do we really take the love of God? Do we honestly believe that it aves to the uttermost, that it goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell? Our salvation could have been simple in execution: God could have saved us out of duty or obligation, or out of a demonstration of sheer power. Instead, however, He did it out of love, a love that sent His only Son through the horrors of death and the gates of Hell itself. Elongated stays in the pit of corruption can turn love into a farce. We must recapture the wonder of a love, "for love is strong as death; jealousy as cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame." (Song of Solomon 8:6b) Have we forgotten that God's very nature is bound up in love (i.e., "God is love"), that He is the very essence of intimate experiential knowledge of another founded on intimate communion with that other? Or have we lost that truth behind the mysterious veil that is the word "Trinity"?
How serious do we really take the forgiveness of God? There are two misconceptions that we must do away with. First, God's love cannot be the grounds for His forgiveness. It can be a motive, but not grounds. His love will find a way to forgive, but it is not the reason He forgive us. Get it through your heads and never forget it: God can forgive us because Christ died, and nothing else. Second, God does not forgive like we forgive. That God "forgives" does not mean that he merely overlooks. God's forgiveness is not ignorance, but absolution. In His forgiveness, sin is done away with in its entirety, and we are made before God as though we never sinned. It is an absolute finality, a finality that God's love sought for us and that Christ's death bought for us. God's love and forgiveness are not matters of sentiment. They are heavy things, matters of "deep magic," and yet we carelessly throw them about as worship buzzwords, or live agnostically towards them in practical experience.
Ask yourself: What would happen if you truly lived the weighty reality of God's love and forgiveness? How would your days change if during those abysmal moments you were thunderously struck with the heavy, rugged clarity of this truth: "God loves me, and I am forgiven"? How many strongholds of the enemy would fade like chaff in the wind if we let that truth envelope us everyday? If we let ourselves soak in any of the great truths of God, would we dare stay the same?
"Love takes Eternity in its embrace;
Forgiveness, in its comprehension.
Dare I treat them less than they are...?"
-Jon Vowell
How seriously do we really take the love of God? Do we honestly believe that it aves to the uttermost, that it goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell? Our salvation could have been simple in execution: God could have saved us out of duty or obligation, or out of a demonstration of sheer power. Instead, however, He did it out of love, a love that sent His only Son through the horrors of death and the gates of Hell itself. Elongated stays in the pit of corruption can turn love into a farce. We must recapture the wonder of a love, "for love is strong as death; jealousy as cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame." (Song of Solomon 8:6b) Have we forgotten that God's very nature is bound up in love (i.e., "God is love"), that He is the very essence of intimate experiential knowledge of another founded on intimate communion with that other? Or have we lost that truth behind the mysterious veil that is the word "Trinity"?
How serious do we really take the forgiveness of God? There are two misconceptions that we must do away with. First, God's love cannot be the grounds for His forgiveness. It can be a motive, but not grounds. His love will find a way to forgive, but it is not the reason He forgive us. Get it through your heads and never forget it: God can forgive us because Christ died, and nothing else. Second, God does not forgive like we forgive. That God "forgives" does not mean that he merely overlooks. God's forgiveness is not ignorance, but absolution. In His forgiveness, sin is done away with in its entirety, and we are made before God as though we never sinned. It is an absolute finality, a finality that God's love sought for us and that Christ's death bought for us. God's love and forgiveness are not matters of sentiment. They are heavy things, matters of "deep magic," and yet we carelessly throw them about as worship buzzwords, or live agnostically towards them in practical experience.
Ask yourself: What would happen if you truly lived the weighty reality of God's love and forgiveness? How would your days change if during those abysmal moments you were thunderously struck with the heavy, rugged clarity of this truth: "God loves me, and I am forgiven"? How many strongholds of the enemy would fade like chaff in the wind if we let that truth envelope us everyday? If we let ourselves soak in any of the great truths of God, would we dare stay the same?
"Love takes Eternity in its embrace;
Forgiveness, in its comprehension.
Dare I treat them less than they are...?"
-Jon Vowell
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