Take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love.
~ EPHESIANS 3:18 [MSG]
Loved with a Heavenly Love
Your goodness can’t win God’s love. Nor can your badness lose it. But you can resist it.
I have a feeling that most people who defy and deny God do so more out of fear than conviction. For all our chest pumping and braggadocio, we are anxious folk—can’t see a step into the future, can’t hear the one who owns us. No wonder we try to gum the hand that feeds us.
But God reaches and touches. He speaks through the immensity of the Russian plain and the density of the Amazon rain forest. Through a physician’s touch in Africa, a bowl of rice in India. Through a Japanese bow or a South American abraço. He’s even been known to touch people through paragraphs like the ones you are reading. If he is touching you, let him.
Mark it down: God loves you with an unearthly love. You can’t win it by being winsome. You can’t lose it by being a loser. But you can be blind enough to resist it.
Don’t. For heaven’s sake, don’t. For your sake, don’t.
“Take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:18–19 MSG). Others demote you. God claims you. Let the definitive voice of the universe say, “You’re still a part of my plan.” . . . God will not let you go.
~ 3:16: THE NUMBERS OF HOPE
Lord, you have reminded us of your loving plan of salvation. May we never try to replace your sacrificial gift with our own attempts to be good enough to deserve it. May we never forget that we don’t have to win your love. May we never fear that we might lose your love. Make us bold to tell others of this amazing gift, amen.
As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds His people.
~ PSALM 125:2
What manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!
~1 JOHN 3:1
May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.
~EPHESIANS 3:19 NLT
