Yesterday, Today and Forever

God never changes! There is no shadow of turning with the Lord. Do you know what this means? It means that His love never changes, for God is Love. The love that He offers you will never be retracted-God will never repent of the Love that He gives. It has been said that God exudes love just as the sun exudes light and heat. He loves because it is His nature to love, and not because the objects of His love are worthy. But His love makes us worthy! That is what the Good News is all about. The love of God in Christ makes us what we have no power to become on our own. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For the Son did not come into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." (John 3:16-17) If we are honest with ourselves and before God, we must confess that we are sinners by nature; that no matter how hard we try to be good, we always fall short. But this does not negate the Love of Christ. Christ loved us while we were yet sinners. In other words, Christ loved us while we were yet unloveable, while we were blind even to the fact that we needed Him, while we were truly dead in our trespasses and sins, and if Christ loved us when we were in that state of blindness and callous sin, what could now tear us from His hand? Nothing. Not life, nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers--nothing. Christ prayed to the Father, "of those whom You have given me, I have lost not one." Surely this gives us great cause to rejoice, for the love of God changes us from sinner to saint, from outcast to brother, from slave to free, from death to life. It is the love of Christ first and foremost that compels us towards repentance (change) and every good thing. Notice that it is not our love for Christ that changes us, but Christ's love for us. Christ sees immense value in us, and through His love, that value becomes a reality in our lives.
In this world there are forces at work against those who would respond to the love of God; very real forces that attack the bedrock of our faith. The main hinderance to love is fear, and fear is everywhere you look in the world. Fear of disease, fear of flood, fear of economic collapse, fear of violence, fear of man. Through the violence we witness on TV, in the news, in movies, in music, we become defensive people, always on the alert and suspicious of all men, thus hindering the progress of love in our hearts. For love and fear cannot coexist. The world bombards our minds with real or percieved threats to our very false sense of security. With forboding tones regarding an outbreak of e.coli that could spread to the entire nation, the anchorman warns us that our very food could be unsafe; with scientific religious ferver they warn us of the collapse of the sky due to global warming; and every day there is a new disease which threatens you and your children, but coincidentally there is also a new drug to treat it! We live in a world of fear. Why? Because a people that live in fear is a people under control. Who is behind all this? The father of lies. He is the source of all that would keep us from the freedom that is ours in Christ. Christ is the One who said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." So wherever you are in your walk with God, choose this day to break free from fear. The bible says 365 times, "fear not." That's once for every day of the year. Is that a coincidence? So begin today to walk in the liberation of Christ's love for you. Meditate on it, think about it and believe it, to the exclusion of everything that contradicts or hinders it. Blessings to you.