Monday, January 21, 2008 9:55 PM
posted by Aric Thorpe
God loves you
Imagine, if you will for a moment, that there actually is a God, a Creator, that loves you with all of His heart and desires to be with you everyday, in everything that you do, now and in the life to come (1 John 4:10). Imagine also that when just “one person” that is walking in sin repents there is rejoicing in heaven (Luke 15:7). Imagine that He looks at you with longing and apprehension because of the battle for your soul (Revelation 12:12), a battle that began at the beginning of creation and one in which you have a decision (Joshua 24:15). His time with you is not guaranteed. It is up to you. So He stands at the door of your heart knocking (Revelation 3:20), standing without in the cold of rejection, rejection that He has repeatedly and consistently partook of throughout history (1 Thessalonians 2:15), the same rejection His Son endured here on this earth before ultimately being killed by those that He came to save (Luke 23:34).
It is not His desire that any one of us should perish but that we should come to repentance, that we should not follow after the things of darkness and destruction but that we should turn in our hearts from those things and live to love Him and walk with Him in the light (2 Peter 3:9). Don’t be cast aside. Do not be uprooted with the tares in the wheat (Matthew 13:29). Purpose in your heart to follow after what really matters in this life (2 Corinthians 4:18). People walk after, seek after, temporary “things” so often and never consider that those things will all perish (1 Timothy 6:7). Those things are not eternal. Choose to think beyond tomorrow into that which is after tomorrow. There is peace in knowing Him (Philippians 4:7). There is joy in knowing Him (1 Peter 1:8). There is release from fear of the unknown in knowing Him (1 John 4:18).
All day long He has stretched forth His arms unto us out of love, and we have been contrary to Him and disobedient (Romans 10:21). In obedience there is life (Isaiah 55:3). In fear there is wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). In His goodness we come to repentance (Romans 2:4). He spilt His own blood for us that we might know Him and escape the entrapment of sin (Ephesians 1:7). Just as Jesus said to Peter, “Satan has desired to sift you like wheat” (Luke 22:31); and again, “the devil goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8), so Jesus desires us to have life through His blood. Powers in the spiritual realm are battling for our souls (Revelation 12:7, Ephesians 6:11) and I implore you in Christ’s stead, be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20). I long for you in the bowels of Christ (Philippians 1:8) that you would come to realize that the motivation of evangelism is not pride, not us vs. them, but to provide you the escape from death and destruction and to give you life, life more abundantly through the blood of Jesus, the Christ of God (John 10:10).
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