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Mission Statement
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THE LOVE OF GOD Who is God to you? What was your first image of God as a child? My image of God as a child was of a very wise, old man with long white hair and beard, seated on a throne. He was a very nice man but rather distant. He would allow me to go to Him but He wouldn't come to me. Any relationship between us depended totally on what I did, not on anything He did. It was very works oriented. Is your image like mine or is it of a:
Our image of God is based on our child experiences, family of origin, and/or our church experiences The saying is, "You can take the child out of the gutter but you can't take the gutter out of the child." You can take yourself out of the image of God you got as a child but you can't take that image out of yourself - except by believing in what God says about Himself in the Bible. Someone once wrote that each person has a God-shaped void inside of him that can only be filled with God Himself; nothing else will fit into that space. Not money or possessions social standing sex power The Word of God talks about this void-concept. "He has made everything appropriate (beautiful) in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, without which men will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end." Ecclesiastes 3:11 So you see how it is impossible to put God in our "void" or our "eternity" if our image of Him is wrong. So how can we change our wrong images? By listening with anointed ears to what God says about Himself. What does the Bible say the real image of God is? #1. God is a Supreme Being who has gone to great lengths to have a personal relationship with you. He does not want any barrier or distance between you and Him. "The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples; but because the Lord loves you..." Deuteronomy 7:7,8a "The Lord appeared...saying, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness." Jeremiah 31:3 #2. God is love and as such He wants to care for you. "Because he (you) have loved Me, therefore I will deliver him (you); I will set him (you) securely on high, because he (you) has known My name. He (you) will call upon Me, and I will answer him (you); I will be with him (you) in trouble; I will rescue him (you), and honor him (you). With a long life I will satisfy him (you), and let him (you) behold My salvation." Psalm 91:14-16 "As for you, My sheep, the sheep of My pasture, you aremine, and I am your God," declares the Lord God. Ezekiel 34:31 The entire chapter of Ezekiel 34 is about what God will do for you and for me even when we are hurt and damaged by those who should have cared for us and been there for us. #3. Because of His great love you us, He sent Jesus. Up till now, I have made a point to only quote verses from the Old Testament that are strictly about God. But you cannot separate God and His love for us without reading on into the New Testament for the rest of God's description of Himself. And what does the rest of the story tell us about the love of God? "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." John 3:16 "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through Him." John 3:17 There goes that image of God as an unforgiving judge. "And He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God. Colossians 1:15 You want a true image of God---look at Jesus. Read the Gospels. Jesus. . .
"He who has seen Me has seen the Father." John 14:9 "I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me." John 14:10 "God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." I John 4:16 "For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother's womb." Psalm 139:13 "He Himself has said, 'I will never desert (or leave) you; nor will I ever forsake you.'" Hebrews 13:5 "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8 God is even now reaching out to you and me. "...now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation." II Corinthians 6:2 If you have never before actually relinquished your life, your heart to God, now is the day for you to receive that kind of salvation. Any day, everyday is a good day to receive more of God. God does not reach out to us just to save us for eternity. This is an invitation to relationship, for salvation, and it is for every single day of our lives. We sing the song, "In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore." God's love offers more than that though. As I have often told people, "God wants to put the sweet by and by into our nasty now and now." Every single day, we need to be saved from something, whether it is a bad habit, a thought pattern, illness, stress. Maybe you have been a Christian for a long time but somewhere along the way you've gotten caught up in the "doing" of church, in religion. Or maybe, you're just tired and weary for whatever reason. Let your image of God change so that it lines up with the Word of God. I grew up in a Christian family and was a very religious child. I did all the "right" things - I went to church, read the Bible, prayed. I truly believed that the Bible was the Word of God and that Jesus Christ was the Son of God Who was born of the virgin Mary, taught the love of God, was crucified for our sins, buried, and resurrected. In one of his letters, the apostle Paul says, "Hey, you want to brag about who you are, where you've come from, and what you've done? This is a very fleshy thing to do, but I challenge you to come close to me! Then he lists all the things he had going for him within the religious community. I could do the same thing. By the time I was only 19 years old, I'd been in Sunday School and church three times a week for my entire life; I'd attended Vacation Bible Schools not only in my town but at all the churches in the surrounding towns; I'd studied at Bible camps even before I was supposed to be old enough to attend; I had 4 years of special training for Christian service under my belt; 7 years of classes on how to teach the scriptures to children; experience as a Sunday School teacher; 2 years of college-level Bible classes; I'd been on Campaigns for Christ in the state I lived in and in three surrounding states; I'd knocked on literally hundreds of doors, inviting people to church - and I had a real fear and phobia about doors; I'd traveled the country with a Christian choir. You name it, I could say, "Been there, got that, done that, knew that." I'd been told all the "right" questions to ask and had been told all the answers. But, you know, I'd sit in church and sing the songs and weep because I knew in my heart that I was singing words I didn't know the meaning of. Words like, "Beyond the printed page, I seek Thee Lord. My spirit pants for Thee, O Living Word." I was a Christian, trusting in the sacrifice and blood of Jesus for salvation but at only 19 years of age, I wept because all my training and all my "doing" wasn't answering the questions in my heart, that God-shaped void. No one had told me that the true purpose of Jesus' life had to do with relationship! The love of God had been talked about but it was something ethereal that was "out there" someplace. Praise God, He didn't confine Himself to my image of Him. He manifested Himself to me at a weekend missionary-training workshop in another state and made real to me exactly what we have seen in theaw scriptures - that Jesus didn't die for a set of rules or to establish a religion or so I'd have to do certain things for Him. He loved me more than that. Jesus died for me not for the world in general. And He did it so I could have a personal relationship with God. He took the punishment for my sin so that I could be acceptable to God. He loves me that much! He did the same for you! When I realized this, all the "shoulds" and "oughts" of religion fell away. I continued to do many of the "right" religious things but not because I felt I had to in order to please God. In fact, I came to learn that I wouldn't have to knock on another strange door for the rest of my life! I'd been bound up by religion but I have been able to come to the same conclusion Paul did after he bragged about himself. "I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." Philippians 3:8 There is such a thing as the Christian religion. But the love of God and the Christianity of the Bible is not a religion. It is not mental assent or doing religious "things." It is a relationship with God the Father through His Son, Jesus. I gave up my religion for a relationship because I learned that GOD LOVES US! "We are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you would hear His voice, do not harden your hearts." Psalm 95:7,8 This verse is for today. We want to be open, yielded, and have anointed ears. Before Jesus died, He prayed this prayer to God: "As you sent Me into the world, I am sending them into the world, and I consecrate Myself to meet their need for growth in truth and holiness." John 17:19 (Living translation) That is a pretty powerful verse. Jesus, the Son of God, the One who is the very image of God was saying that He, personally, was consecrating Himself to meet our need for growth in truth and holiness. "If God is for us, who is against us?" Romans 8:31 GOD LOVES YOU! I can't say it enough - He really does love you. I'd like you to do a little exercise. Think of someone who has wronged you and hurt you badly. If that person were in trouble, would you be willing to give up your first-born to save that person's life? I truly had to face this question when my youngest son was sent, as a Marine, into the Desert Storm war. He was sent to offer up his life for people we didn't know and who weren't even Christians - in fact, they were opposed to Christianity! We had to help him with his will and with his good-bys. I have to tell you, I had a tough time with it. Yet this is what Jesus did for us. "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Ephesians 2:4,5 Jesus healed people that He knew would turn around and betray Him. He delivered people that He knew would crucify Him the next day. That's the love of God. It is incredible. It is awesome. "For I know the plans that I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you, and you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. And I will be found by you," declares the Lord. Jeremiah 29:11-14a GOD LOVES US!
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