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Falling in
Love with God
Many
of us have at one time or another fallen in love with someone.
Those who, like me, are married, and those engaged to be
married, know what falling in love with a person of the opposite
sex means. Feelings and emotions so intense and exquisite seem
to spring from the deepest crevices of ones heart. In fact there
is a secular song I once used to hear that has the lyrics,
'everything I do, I do it for you'. In this love ballad belted
out by one Bryan Adams, the singer pledges his loyalty to a lady
by saying that he would lie, and even die for her!
If one can pledge
their love to a human being so intensely as Bryan Adams does in
his song, how much more should we pledge our loyalty and love to
God our creator. The Bible says that God is love and he who does
not have love does not know God (I John: 18). This simply means
that God and love are inseparable. In fact they are one and the
same. If you want to know what matter constitutes God - what God
is made of - you only need to look at love and therein,
inextricably and perpetually enjoined, you will find God.
But I'm not referring to the kind
of love that Bryan Adams was alluding to. I am talking of a love
so deep, so caring, so unselfish, so kind, as to make God give
His only begotten Son Jesus Christ to come down to earth and die
so that you and I may live (John 3:16). God loved us so much
that He gave His beloved and only Son to die for our own sins.
God knew that after Adam and Eve had sinned, man was destined to
die since the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). Rather than
watch you and I die in our sinfulness, he sent Jesus, Him who
knew no sin, to come and recompense our sin by His righteous
blood. Him who knew no sin became sin so that we might become
the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21)! Where we were supposed
to be punished for our sins, He took the punishment in our stead
so that even though we were sinful, we can now claim the
righteousness of God. Can you imagine that kind of Love? Jesus
did not just die on our behalf; he went further beyond the
grave, took the key of death from the devil and instead etched a
key of eternal life on His bleeding hands. Blasting through the
gates of Hell as the demons wailed and shrieked in fear, Jesus
Christ now comes brandishing the key of eternal life to all who
care to take it. Though through sin we were destined to die,
Jesus Christ has ransomed us and instead of death, he has given
us a gift - eternal life.
To access this
eternal life, just put your hands on his scarred hands, look up
to His loving eyes and see how he cares for you, allow Him to
embrace you and feel the warmth of His heavenly embrace as His
holy kiss rests on your trembling lips. At that very moment you
will know beyond any doubt that He is in love with you. He longs
to be with you. He desires to have fellowship with you. He does
not want to dwell in eternity without you. He died for you so
that you may live with Him forever and ever to the Glory of God.
Many times I have
pondered about what drove God to do such a seemingly crazy thing
as to offer as a sacrifice His only and beloved Son Jesus Christ
to die for a generation so ungrateful and vile. However when I
read in Genesis (1:27) that God created us in his image and
after His likeness, then I know why he loves us so much: it is
because we are (or are supposed to be) by nature, like Him. When
God created Adam and Eve, he looked at them and saw his
reflection in them. It is at that very moment that He fell in
Love with us. One can therefore understand God's disappointment
with Adam and Eve when they disobeyed Him by eating that which
He had forbidden them. One day God was taking His usual evening
stroll in the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:8) as was His custom,
looking for Adam and Eve so that He could have fellowship with
them. How disappointed He must have felt when He realised that
He could no longer have fellowship with them because they had
sinned!
However, despite
that act of disobedience, God did not give up on mankind. He
loves us so much as to allow us to suffer the wages of sin. But
since there is no way He can contradict His Word that says the
wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), He knew that if He did not
act fast, man would be eternally vanquished. That's how Jesus,
His only begotten son, came into the scene. God was willing to
offer His only Son Jesus Christ to come down to earth, suffer
humiliation, rejection, and death on the cross, so that you and
I may be reconciled back to God. If that is not love, then I
wonder what is!
God is love and
they that dwell in Him must also dwell in love (1 John 4:16).
What this means is that we need to fall in love with God just as
much as He has fallen in Love with us. Falling in love with God
is different from the way we fall in love with mankind. The kind
of love that I'm taking about is such as the one described in 1
Cor. 13. We need to have an intimacy with God that far
supersedes the intimacy with fellow mankind. To get to the point
like David who once told God that he thirsted for Him just a
deer pants after water (Ps 42:1), you must be totally and madly
in love with God. To get to a point where like David, you would
say: 'My
soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my
heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God' (Ps 84:2), you
must be irrevocably in love with God. For you to unequivocally
declare like Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego that you will not
denounce your God, you must have not only a personal
relationship with God, but you must also be so intimate with Him
that you can say like Bryan Adams, 'I can die for you'.
That's
the kind of love that Jesus is asking of us today. A love so
intense and intimate that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be
able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord (8:38-39). My prayer for you is that you may fall
totally in love with God. Since time immemorial He has always
been in love with us. It is up to us to respond to His love. To
do this, everything else that we hold dear must pale into
insignificance when we come face to face with the love of God.
Like two lovers lost in their bliss, we must be eternally
intertwined with God. Only then can we surely say that we are,
indeed, in love with God.
If you
are not yet born again, you have not accepted the love of God,
which is in Christ Jesus. Look up to him now and hear Him say to
you: 'I love you, come to me'. Since the beginning of time, He
has been waiting for you to reciprocate His love. In fact the
bible says that Jesus is actually knocking at the door of your
heart (Rev. 3:20). Won't you let Him in? If you will, say this
little and uncomplicated prayer: 'Dear Jesus Christ, I have
sinned against you a great deal. I have ignored your love for so
long and I can no longer continue without you. Right now I lay
down my sin and the death penalty that goes with it. In it's
place I take your forgiveness and the gift of eternal life. Save
me now. I want to fall in love with you. Amen.' If you have said
this prayer, I can only give you one guarantee: You are saved!
You have in that short moment passed on from death to life –
eternal life. Now start reading the Word of God and He will
start revealing His mysteries to you. Next look for a
Pentecostal Church near you where Jesus Christ is acknowledged
as Savior and Lord, and where the gifts of the Holy Spirit work
unhindered. You may also go a step further and write to us at
the address below. Also remember to visit our website,
www.swordofthespiritministries.net. You will be
eternally blessed.
Innocent
Mwangi
April 09, 2008 |
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