Grace, Love, and Mercy

I feel as if this verse incapsulates exactly what this site is all about. God's grace, love, and mercy for us is so vast, the universe can't even contain it. Neither can time. It's not something we can fully understand or measure this side of eternity.

The Creator of all things, loves us so much that before we were even born, He sent His Son, a part of His own being, to live in perfection, deny the devil three times in the desert, suffer unimaginable verbal, emotional, and physical abuse even though He was completely innocent, die an agonizing death, descend into hell to pay a ransom for every single one of us, rise again to the earth to continue His ministry in a perfected body, then ascend to heaven to sit next to the heavenly Father, to advocate on our behalf! I don't know about you, but I certainly have never had anyone else love me that much. And I am absolutely certain no one else ever will.

In His mercy, a fine that we all owed and would have never been able to pay, was transferred to Jesus. We deserve the punishment of our sins. Instead, we receive grace because He gave us a "credit card" with no expiration date, interest, or hidden fees. The balance is forever paid by Him. He gave us eternal life in exchange for our sins. He paid our past debt and our future debt in advance. He literally purchased us from the devil with His own holy blood. And what does He ask for in return? To have faith in Jesus Christ, make Him our Lord and Savior, and acknowledge He died and rose again to wash our sin slates clean. That's all we have to do. Once you open your heart to Jesus, you will start to feel the gift of the Holy Spirit stir inside you (yes, our Father loves to lavish us with gifts on top of gifts). There are only two commands He gives us. If you simply follow these two commands, they cover over the multitude of sins. And they circle back to the love of God.

Two commands... We love Him first and above all. We seek Him first. We do not let anyone, or anything become an idol in our hearts or become more important than Him. Second, we share His love with others. All others. Not just family, friends, and people who are nice to us. Those people are pretty easy to love, right? But because of His great love for ALL He created in His image, He commands us to love the outcasts, the sinners, the homeless, the prisoners, your coworkers that are rude and cause trouble, the guy that cut you off in traffic and showed you only half of the "peace" hand signal, the "friend" that you just found out has been spreading vicious gossip about you, people who have abused you, people who have discouraged you, even the people who seem to hate you. This seems really hard at first, but I promise, with the help of the Holy Spirit, it does get easier. God knows us, our nature, and our hearts. He knows this is hard for us. It was hard for Jesus to have his skin ripped to shreds while being spit on. Just being real here. But that's why He gave us His Spirit, so that through Him and not our own flawed selves, it's possible. The more we surrender, the more He gives us His love to spread. Pray for your enemies. Love them like Jesus. It may be their only hope for turning to Jesus. Actively pray for the spirit of God's love to flow out of you. He loves to answer these kinds of unselfish prayers.

Reflection:
What comes to your mind when you think of God's love?

Do you feel intimate with God or reserved in your relationship with Him?

Are you holding on to beliefs that you have to earn His love and salvation?

Are there difficult people in your life you need to extend God's love to?

Read. Reflect. Pray. Obey. Repeat.