The Great Love of the Lord Pt 2

And God answers... "You don't know how much I love you. The moment you think you understand is the moment you do not understand. I am God not man. You tell others about Me -- that I am a loving God. Your words are glib. My words are written in the blood of My only Son. The next time you preach about My love with such obonxious familiarity, I may come and blow your whole prayer meeting apart. When you come at Me with studied professionalism, I will expose you as a rank amateur. When you try to convince others that you understand what you are talking about, I will tell you to shut up and fall flat on your face."

-- Brennan Manning

Your assigment for next week:

• How would you live differently if you really understood how much God loves you?
• What are some verses that speak about this?
  

The Great Love of the Lord

Monday, Sept 14, 2009

Ever think that "Christianese" words -- like righteousness, salvation, grace -- get overused, and lose their meaning?  I do.  I have often thought that we hear them so often, even say them so often, that we skim over the words, like a rock skipping on a lake, without ever plunging into the depths of what they really mean.

Consider, for example, the most famous verse in the Bible: John 3:16.  Almost everyone knows this verse (or at least of this verse); we learned it in Sunday school as a small child; we see it at football games, on billboards, on t-shirts. But when do ever consider what it means?

If you really look closely at the meaning packed into each word of this remarkable verse, you might get something more like this:

The God handed over The Son, The Only-Born, that all the ones trusting into him not might not be destroyed, but might have life that is not limited by time. And this is the reason: He utterly loved this world that turned its back on him.

Reading:
Psalm 107:1-43, especially verse 43:
Those who are wise will take all this to heart; they will see in our history the faithful love of the Lord.


see also Ephesians 2:4-5, Romans 5:7-8