Have you ever asked yourself whether God really loves you?
Have
you considered how you can know with certainty that God loves you? If God does
love you, why? In Romans 5:6-11 says “God
demonstrated his love toward us by offering his son Jesus to die on the cross
for our sins, and by raising him from the dead, so sinners would be justified
by faith, reconciled to God, and delivered from God’s wrath. Jesus’ death for
sinners and his resurrection from the dead that guarantees future salvation
from God’s wrath for those sinners for whom he died.”
Christ died at the right time for the ungodly. He
identifies the “weak” and the “ungodly” from 5:6 as “sinners” in verse 8 in
order to specify that Jesus died for unrighteous people to accomplish their
salvation. Jesus’ death for the ungodly happened while they were “still”
sinners in a state of ungodliness, not when they were righteous.
He did this because of His love to us, to a point of dying
on the Cross on
behalf of us sinners
God of SACRIFICE
Christ is our Savior and the ultimate sacrifice for sin.
Even though He was divine, Jesus became a human being to suffer and die for the
sins of mankind. Philippians 2:5-7. Christ as our Savior gave His life that we
might live. He died a horrible death, as our Passover lamb.
Through His sacrifice, Jesus took the ultimate penalty of
sin—death—upon Himself, freeing us, if we accept His sacrifice in continuing
repentance, from death being our final fate-Hebrews 2:9
By accepting Jesus Christ's sacrifice in repentance and
faith, we can be assured that our sins are blotted out. We can go forward in
our Christian lives with confidence, knowing that through that sacrifice we can
be reconciled to the Father. As a result, we can also look forward to eternal
life in the Kingdom of God as a gift of God's grace because of this tremendous
sacrifice that Jesus and the Father willingly gave for every one of us.
GOD of reconciliation
On the cross, God poured out the full fury of His wrath
against all the sins of all the people who would ever believe Isaiah
44:22. Because of the propitiation of
Christ, God’s wrath is satisfied, and we who were once enemies of God have now
received the gift of reconciliation. Because of reconciliation, Christ has
taken our place, and we have taken his. Therefore, God counts us righteous as
his own Son. What a glorious blessing! Christ takes our place on the cross and
gives us the righteousness of God.
God’s initiative of reconciliation through Christ
transforms believers into God’s new creation.
With all of creation, we await our final and perfect transformation in
the end of time. At that time, when
Jesus returns, God’s mission will be complete.
People of every nation, tribe, and language, gathered as one, will
worship the Lamb, the tree of life and its leaves shall be for the healing of
the nations, and the new heavens and earth shall make the reign of God a
reality with all things reconciled to God (Romans 8:18-39, Revelation 7:9-17
God of compassion
God knows us, and He has compassion on our weakness. He is
not a hard, unjust God. He is righteous, and He is moved with compassion for
us. He is our biggest supporter; no one wants it to succeed for us more than He
does. Believe in that. Believe in the wonderfully uplifting words He spoke
through the prophet Jeremiah:
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the
Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then
you will call upon Me and go 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.” Jeremiah 29:11-13.
Return to God
Returning to God begins with repentance—a willingness to be
very honest about the ways in which we have moved away from God and to tell as
much truth about it as we are able. Lent time initiates a season
of deeper self-knowledge about all the ways in which we hold ourselves back
from life in God.
During Lent, we should be hopeful about the fact that there
is a path for returning to God no matter how distracted I have been. What
if Lent became for us a season that was not so much about “giving something up”
but was more about finding our way back to the one we love and long for the
most? What would it take for Lent to become for us as leaders a season of
returning to that which is of greatest value and claiming the nearness of God
as our deepest good?
Lent should be a season to look for the path of returning
and walk it in ways that our souls desperately need- Jeremiah
24:4-7
