Tag / God is love
Proverbs in Light of the Cross; Holding a Grudge is no fun!
I am writing tonight from the beautiful Tampa Bay area.
Love prospers when a fault is forgiven, but dwelling on it separates close friends. Proverbs 17:9 NLT
Have you wondered what it would be like if Jesus reacted the way we do to people who mistreat us?
What if Jesus had called Judas a backstabber instead of friend? See Matthew 26:50.
What if Jesus had refused to forgive the repentant thief on the cross? What if, instead of promising to remember Him when He came into His kingdom, Jesus had reacted with, “No way! You were mean to me!” But instead of holding a grudge Love prospered. See Luke 23.
What if after the Resurrection, Jesus had sent a message to His disciples that He would be meeting them in Galilee, except for Peter, because of course He denied Him? Instead He told them tell everyone including Peter I will meet them in Galilee. See Mark 16.
In all three scenarios Jesus let Love prosper. 1 Corinthians 13:5 NLT tells us love
is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.
When 1 Corinthians 13 describes love it is describing God for
God is love. 1 John 4:8 NLT
In the three scenarios we just examined, Jesus gave us an example of love, and how it prospers.
While love prospers us, its no fun to hold a grudge. It is much more fun to forgive and love. Dwelling on love brings healing. Dwelling on other’s faults only brings pain. Jesus knew this. Don’t you find that forgiving and loving people feels a lot better than holding a grudge?
You may study this week’s Sabbath School lesson on Proverbs here.
Glimpses of Grace; God is Love And Not A Pyschopath
I am writing today from the beautiful Tampa Bay area.
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. Genesis 2:3
Suppose my girlfriend told me this Valentine’s day that she wanted pink roses. I may not be the brightest Romeo in the world, but I know better than to go to the flower shop, thinking, “a rose is a rose and all roses are alike, I will just pick one. Let’s see, everyone else is getting red roses, so since it doesn’t really make any difference I will just get her a red rose. I know she asked for pink but what difference does it make?” If I love my girlfriend I will get her the color rose she specifically mentioned. Likewise, if I really love God, I will observe the Sabbath day that He mentioned, and not just say, after He mentioned the seventh-day, that it really doesn’t matter.
Speaking of God and Valentine’s day, you know how I know that God is really love? Because He looks out for our needs instead of just thinking about Himself in our relationship with Him. If you are in a romantic relationship, or any other relationship for that matter, with a person who isolates you from your family and friends, you can be sure this is not love. It is a psychopath! Only psychopaths try to isolate you from others. Notice what God says in Genesis 2:18, “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” God could have said, “I am God and I am all that Adam needs.” But that would not be a God of love. That would be a psychopath. Even God realizes He is not all that we need! God realizes we need a community, so God creates Eve so that Adam can have a help meet, but even beyond that, Adam and Eve can now create a community. God encourages us in Hebrews 10 to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. God is love. He is healthy and not a psycho-ego maniac. If God understands that He is not all we need, but that we also need a community, then shouldn’t we all realize that in order to be healthy, we need to be a part of a church and community, and not live our lives as hermits? Also, shouldn’t we realize too, that our loved ones need space and time with other friends too? If our relationships are truly healthy, and motivated by love instead of ego, we will not be smothering or isolating our loved ones from others. Healthy couples and healthy families are active in their church and communities and are not jealous when the other member in the relationship has friends. If you are involved with someone who thinks they are all you need, and isolating you from family and friends, then they are really messed up, thinking they are even greater than God. Not even God thinks He is all you need.
Acts 1; God’s Purpose For His Church
I am writing today from the beautiful Tampa Bay area.
But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. Acts 1:8
The church is God’s appointed agency for the salvation of men. It was organized for service, and its mission is to carry the gospel to the world. From the beginning it has been God’s plan that through His church shall be reflected to the world His fullness and His sufficiency. The members of the church, those whom He has called out of darkness into His marvelous light, are to show forth His glory. The church is the repository of the riches of the grace of Christ; and through the church will eventually be made manifest, even to “the principalities and powers in heavenly places,” the final and full display of the love of God. Ephesians 3:10. {AA 9.1}
The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan is over the character of God. Is God love like He says or is He a cruel tyrant as Satan claims? The former quote reminds me of another quote in Christ Object Lessons, “Christ is waiting with longing desire for the manifestation of Himself in His church. When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim them as His own.” {COL 69.1} What God is wanting to place in the hearts of His people, is not a cold, formal or legalistic perfection. God is a forgiving God no doubt! He is not perfecting the church so that we can earn our way to heaven. Heaven is a gift. God is not watching our every move, looking for something to check off against us on His list. The character is revealed, not by occasional good deeds and occasional misdeeds, but by the tendency of the habitual words and acts. {SC 57.2}
God is not perfecting His church so they can earn salvation. However He is empowering His church to perfectly represent His love and character to a world starving for love. There is a trial going on. We are not on trial, God is. Satan is accusing God of being a cruel, loveless tyrant. The world is sitting in the jury box, and what God needs from His church is proper representation of His character so that in this trial the jury can make an educated decision about the character of God. God accepts mankind, but mankind will not accept God until it knows for sure that God is indeed the God of love that He says He is. This is where God needs help from His church.
The church is God’s fortress, His city of refuge, which He holds in a revolted world. Any betrayal of the church is treachery to Him who has bought mankind with the blood of His only-begotten Son. From the beginning, faithful souls have constituted the church on earth. In every age the Lord has had His watchmen, who have borne a faithful testimony to the generation in which they lived. These sentinels gave the message of warning; and when they were called to lay off their armor, others took up the work. God brought these witnesses into covenant relation with Himself, uniting the church on earth with the church in heaven. He has sent forth His angels to minister to His church, and the gates of hell have not been able to prevail against His people. {AA 11.2}
Through centuries of persecution, conflict, and darkness, God has sustained His church. Not one cloud has fallen upon it that He has not prepared for; not one opposing
force has risen to counterwork His work, that He has not foreseen. All has taken place as He predicted. He has not left His church forsaken, but has traced in prophetic declarations what would occur, and that which His Spirit inspired the prophets to foretell has been brought about. All His purposes will be fulfilled. His law is linked with His throne, and no power of evil can destroy it. Truth is inspired and guarded by God; and it will triumph over all opposition. {AA 11.3}
During ages of spiritual darkness the church of God has been as a city set on a hill. From age to age, through successive generations, the pure doctrines of heaven have been unfolding within its borders. Enfeebled and defective as it may appear, the church is the one object upon which God bestows in a special sense His supreme regard. It is the theater of His grace, in which He delights to reveal His power to transform hearts. {AA 12.1}
Everyone in whose heart Christ abides, everyone who will show forth His love to the world, is a worker together with God for the blessing of humanity. As he receives from the Saviour grace to impart to others, from his whole being flows forth the tide of spiritual life.
The Jewish leaders thought themselves too wise to need instruction, too righteous to need salvation, too highly honored to need the honor that comes from Christ. The Saviour turned from them to entrust to others the privileges they had abused and the work they had slighted. God’s glory must be revealed, His word established. Christ’s kingdom must be set up in the world. The salvation of God must be made known in the cities of the wilderness; and the disciples were called to do the work that the Jewish leaders had failed to do. {AA 16.1}
AA=Acts of the Apostles, COL=Christ Object Lessons, SC=Steps to Christ.
You may find more studies and devotionals on my personal website In Light of the Cross.
John 17; To Know God..
I am writing today from the beautiful Tampa Bay area.
John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
Said the Saviour: “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.” And God declared by the prophet: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.” {5T 737.1}
No man, without divine aid, can attain to this knowledge of God. The apostle says that “the world by wisdom knew not God.” Christ “was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.” Jesus declared to His disciples: “No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.” In that last prayer for His followers, before entering the shadows of Gethsemane, the Saviour lifted His eyes to heaven, and in pity for the ignorance of fallen men He said: “O righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee: but I have known Thee.” “I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world.” {5T 737.2}
From the beginning it has been Satan’s studied plan to cause men to forget God, that he might secure them to himself. Hence he has sought to misrepresent the character of God, to lead men to cherish a false conception of Him. The Creator has been presented to their minds as clothed with the attributes of the prince of evil himself,–as arbitrary, severe, and unforgiving,–that He might be feared, shunned, and even hated by men. Satan hoped to so confuse the minds of those whom he had deceived that they would put God out of their knowledge. Then he would obliterate the divine image in man and impress his own likeness upon the soul; he would imbue men with his own spirit and make them captives according to his will. {5T 738.1}
It was by falsifying the character of God and exciting distrust of Him that Satan tempted Eve to transgress. By sin the minds of our first parents were darkened, their natures were degraded, and their conceptions of God were molded by their own narrowness and selfishness. And as men became bolder in sin, the knowledge and the love of God faded from their minds and hearts. “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God,” they “became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” {5T 738.2}
At times Satan’s contest for the control of the human family appeared to be crowned with success. During the ages preceding the first advent of Christ the world seemed almost wholly under the sway of the prince of darkness, and he ruled with a terrible power as though through the sin of our first parents the kingdoms of the world had become his by right. Even the covenant people, whom God had chosen to preserve in the world the knowledge of Himself, had so far departed from Him that they had lost all true conception of His character. {5T 738.3}
Christ came to reveal God to the world as a God of love, full of mercy, tenderness, and compassion. The thick darkness with which Satan had endeavored to enshroud the throne of Deity was swept away by the world’s Redeemer, and the Father was again manifest to men as the light of life. {5T 738.4}
Matthew 4; Faith in God’s Love
I am writing today from the beautiful Tampa Bay area.
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. Matthew 4:1-3
Jesus overcame sin for us by meeting the same temptation Eve met. In the Garden, Satan had told Eve that if she ate of the forbidden fruit that she would be like God and be much happie,r and insinuated that God had withheld this special fruit because He did not really love them. Eve’s sin was rebelling against God and buying the lie of Satan that God did not really love her. Sin is saying God does not really love me. When we do not believe God is planning for our good and happiness we rebel and start making our own laws and plans.
In the wilderness Satan insinuates again to Jesus that He is not the object of God’s love. “IF” “Thou be the Son of God” insinuated distrust. Satan appears an angel of light to Jesus, who has taken human nature and not eaten for days. Satan insinuates that there was an angel who had been rejected by God and banished from heaven. Satan wanted Jesus to feel like that angel and believe that he, an angel of light was the Son of God. “Turn those stones into bread and prove to me that you are the Son of God, in whom He is well pleased. Prove to me that your Father still loves you and has not banished you to this sin dark world” was Satan’s temptation. Just days earlier, Jesus had heard the Word of God saying, “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased.” Jesus had a choice to make. He could go by feelings and appearances, or He could go by the Word of God. Jesus overcame by putting His faith in the Word of God, that He was loved by the Father. Thus, Jesus overcame and solved the sin problem by trusting in God’s love. When we choose sin, we are saying we don’t think God really loves us. When we obey God’s Word we are putting our trust in His love.
By God giving us His One and Only Son to us, we no longer need to doubt God’s love! By dying on the Cross Jesus does not convince God to accept us, God already accepts us. By dying on the Cross God wins our trust back, by proving that He really does love us so much that He would die for us. Would Satan do that? No! We can trust God’s law of love now. He really does love us!
Here is another article I wrote a while back called “Was the Atonement to Appease an Angry God or an Angry Race?”
Redemption in Romans, Lesson 9
I am writing today from the beautiful Tampa Bay area.
This week’s SS lesson takes a look at freedom in Christ. To me, real freedom begins when we break free from Satan’s lies. Jesus says in John 8:32, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” The truth is about God’s love. Jesus is the truth. Jesus equals God. God equals love, therefore the Truth must equal love as well. So we see that Truth is much deeper than setting the world straight about what day is Holy or what foods should not be eaten. The truth Jesus speaks of is His love and character.
Satan appeared as a serpent and told Eve she just had to try this forbidden fruit in order to experience a higher quality of life. The serpent insinuated that God did not want her to have a quality life. By taking the fruit, Eve was putting her faith in the serpent. Eve’s sin was unbelief in God’s love. When we sin, we do not doubt God’s power. we doubt His love. When this sin occurred, God did not leave Adam and Eve. God stayed right where He was, but Adam and Eve ran from Him. Sin does not separate God from us. It separates us from God. Notice whenever Jesus was in the presence of a demoniac , Jesus was not repulsed or tormented by the presence of the demoniac but rather the demoniac was tormented by the presence of Jesus.
Even after Adam and Eve separated themselves from God He still had a plan. He would show His love by dying for them! In 1 John 1:29 John says to Behold the Lamb. By beholding we become changed. What changes is our attitude about God’s love. We behold a God who loves us so much He would die forever in order to save us. Save us from what? The lies of Satan that bring death. You see when we buy Satan’s lies and put our faith in him, we reject Jesus who is the life and we choose death. When we behold the Lamb, our attitude about His character changes and we believe in Him again. When we believe in God and His love, all the damage caused by Adam and Eve are reversed. When we believe God really loves us, we no longer choose to perish and we accept back the eternal life that God had wanted us to have all along. See John 3:16. (Isaiah 28:15 & 18 refer to an agreement the sinner has made with death and hell. In this chapter the Messiah breaks not the agreement He had made for the destruction of the sinner, but rather the agreement the sinner had made with death. Verse 15 also implies that the covenant was made when the sinner trusted in lies.)
God the Father did not need to see His Son die in order to forgive us as much as we needed to see His Son die in order to repent of our attitude about Him and His love! When we see the truth about God’s love we can experience freedom from Satan’s lies. We will no longer bind ourselves to other god’s, buying the lie that they will make us happy. We will no longer buy Satan’s lies that we need to steal , lie, or covet to get what others have to be happy. We are freed from the lie that immoral sex brings fulfillment. Remember, the serpent did not make Eve doubt God’s power. He made her doubt God’s love. When the Son sets you free from Satan’s lies and false accusations about God not being a God of love, and you see the truth about His love, you shall be free indeed!
Click here to see some ways Satan lies about God’s Character and what the truth really is.
In Light of The Cross 