blessings

Jan

2025

The secret of life is found in Christ

Readings for Epiphany festival, January 6th

Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3: 1-12, Matthew 2:1-12

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising,and have come to pay him homage” (Matthew 2:1-2).

God works in mysterious ways – leading us to his grace

How did Eastern magi know to go to Jerusalem when they saw something unusual in their stargazing (Matthew 2:1,2)? What we call the Star of Bethlehem may have been miraculous in its appearance. It may have been a manifestation of the glory of the LORD—such as when the LORD led the Israelites through the wilderness, going “in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light” (Exodus 13:21). Perhaps the wise men were led by the same glory of the LORD that shone around the angels who appeared above the fields near Bethlehem heralding Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:9).

However, many of God’s miraculous dealings with us are in and under and through things we tend to see as normal occurrences. We apply water to a person in God’s name, by Christ’s instruction, and that person is connected to Christ and made a child of God. We receive bread and wine by Christ’s instruction, and we are connected to his sufferings and death and filled with God’s grace. God’s most profound miracles often are hidden under things that seem ordinary. What the wise men saw may have been viewed by others as something natural, as no big deal. A modern astronomer who gives credence to the Bible’s story suggested that the bright object in the sky could have been a special alignment between planets and stars—a conjunction occurring when celestial bodies appear to meet in the night sky from our vantage point on earth. Astronomer Michael Molnar pointed to an alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, the moon and the sun in the constellation of Aries that occurred around the time when Jesus was born. “This conjunction happened in the early morning hours, which aligns with the Gospel’s description of the Star of Bethlehem as a rising morning star” (Space.com, 12/22/24).

Magi were scholars and advisors to the rulers in ancient Babylon and Persia. They were astronomers and astrologers who studied the skies diligently. These particular magi likely studied the Hebrew scriptures too. The magi were a class of intellectuals that once had included the brightest minds among the Jewish people taken captive by the Babylonians. In 605 BC, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah and others were among Israelites of noble rank, “versed in every branch of wisdom, endowed with knowledge and insight,” who were deemed “competent to serve in the king’s palace” (Daniel 1:3,4). Daniel’s name as a member of the magi in Babylon was Belteshazzar. Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were given the names Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (Daniel 1:7). It seems that Daniel’s wisdom and writings—and other Jewish prophets’ writings—were things these magi, 600 years later, had in mind along with whatever they saw in the skies. Daniel’s prophecy had included a cryptic timeline about how long it would be between “the time that the word went out [for the Israelites] to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the time of an anointed prince”—-when the “anointed one” or Messiah would come (cf. Daniel 9:24-27 and ReasonForHopeJesus.com).

Because of the testimony Daniel gave centuries before, the wise men who traveled to find Jesus may have been searching the skies for a sign around the very time Jesus was born. We don’t know exactly what they saw. They may have seen an unusual alignment of planets and stars and understood it as an indication of the Messiah’s arrival, in keeping with prophecies about the brightness of the dawn at his coming into the world (Isaiah 60:1-3). And they may have seen a supernatural manifestation of the glory of the LORD in the skies—pointing them to the specific house where Jesus was when they went to look for him in Bethlehem.

We don’t need to belabor ourselves trying to explain exactly what the phenomenon of the Star of Bethlehem was. It’s okay to confess it as a mystery. Our faith is grounded in confessing that the workings of our God are full of mystery and wonder. As the heavens are higher than the earth, God’s ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:9). As a hymn writer famously described, “God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform.”

We don’t always like that. We want things to be obvious. We want to see signs that point directly to us and point us in a specific direction. I’ve known people who looked for signs from God to determine if they should accept a new job or stay in their current position. Others interpreted everything they saw as a message from above—such as seeing every little coincidence as a sign that the person they just met was their soulmate, destined to be the love of their life. In doing so, they rushed the relationship, not building deep connections. They ignored or downplayed frictions, convincing themselves they were meant to be together … and then they fell apart. They had seen only what they wanted to see and missed the many red flags that kept popping up all along the way.

I knew a woman who struggled over even the smallest daily decisions. She constantly wanted a sign from God to show her what to do. She asked our church’s lay minister for help knowing what God’s will was. As they talked, she put two pens on the table in front of her and asked, “Like right now, how do I know which pen God wants me to use?” We needed to encourage her to walk each day’s path with confidence that whichever thoughtful decisions she made, God would be with her.

In the daily course of our lives, God leads us in everyday ways more so than by spectacular signs or miraculous moments. He leads us by reminders of what his word has taught us. He leads us by the Christ-like actions of others who help us when we need help. We don’t want to miss those clear messages from God while we’re looking all about for some elusive supernatural signal.

We wish we could know how our story will unfold, seeing clearly what lies ahead. God asks us to trust him, confident that he knows our needs and will be blessing our futures. The apostles and prophets spoke of God’s doings and dealings with us as a mystery. Paul described how the mystery of Christ was made known to him by revelation. “In former generations,” he said, “this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.” A part of that mystery was that God’s promise was not limited to just some people. All people, Jews and Gentiles alike, were to be “fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” Those of us who have come to know “the boundless riches of Christ” have a role in helping others “see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things,” so that through us, the church, “the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known” and we and others may have boldness and confidence through faith in Christ (Ephesians 3: 1-12).

Maintaining faith in God continues to confront us with mystery, as much of what we experience in life seems at odds with the goodness and peace we want to have. Mary and Joseph’s early days with Jesus had bright moments. Shepherds came to the stable where the child was born, telling of a visit by angels. Later, wise men came to worship and brought expensive gifts. But Jesus’ family had been uprooted from their home in Nazareth by a government order requiring that they be in Bethlehem for census and taxation purposes. Immediately after the visit by the magi, Joseph and Mary needed to use value from their gifts to flee for their lives. The regional ruler, Herod, felt threatened when court officials from far away inquired where to find the child who had been born king of the Jews (Matthew 2:2) When the magi did not report back to him the child’s location, Herod ordered all baby boys in and around Bethlehem be killed, determined to get rid of any supposed new king by butchery (Matthew 2:16). By God’s intervention, Joseph and Mary and Jesus escaped to Egypt, remaining there until Herod’s death (around a year or so later). Things were not easy for them.

Our lives have bright moments, but also many fears and tragedies and turmoils. It is good for us to confess, “God works in mysterious ways,” rather than looking only for immediate and obvious signs of blessings. We get that phrase about God’s mysterious ways from the hymn I mentioned earlier. The hymn writer, William Cowper, had bright moments in his life but also dire struggles of heart and soul. After William was born (in 1731), his mother lost five other children in their infancy. Then, when William was six years old, his mother died while giving birth to his younger brother John—the only sibling that survived. William was traumatized by losing his mother. He was sent to boarding school, where he was severely bullied. He managed to go on to become a successful student and writer. When he was 31 years old, he was offered a prestigious position as Keeper of the Journals in the House of Lords. But his appointment was challenged and he was to undergo a public examination at the Bar of the House. His fragile psyche could not handle that, and he had a breakdown. He made attempts at suicide. He went to be treated for two years at a mental health asylum. He was befriended by faithful people and became connected to evangelical churches. In reflection on his life’s journey—including especially his bouts with suicidal thoughts and depression—William Cowper wrote these lines in a poem he originally entitled, Conflict: Light Shining out of Darkness:

God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm. …

Ye fearful saints fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.*

When you are struggling to see hope in your life, bear in mind the experience of Mary and Joseph. They lived in a world where they had to make difficult journeys from Nazareth to Bethlehem and then from Bethlehem to Egypt. But God made his blessings known by visits from shepherds and wise men. Keep in mind the life of Jesus, which culminated in suffering and scorn and pain and death. But God made his victory known in Jesus’ resurrection and ascension as King of kings and Lord of lords. Keep in mind the experience of God’s people throughout the course of history who have battled stresses and strains—such as the life of William Cowper—and yet can confess that God works in mysterious ways and is with us through the storms.

When life is shrouded in mystery and difficulty, we may cry out to God like Job did long ago, “Why? Why? Why?” (Cf. Job chapter 3). We may not see obvious signs that God is still with us, watching over us. But we know that our Redeemer lives, “and that at the last he will stand upon the earth,” and we will “in our own flesh see God on our side” (Job 19:25-27). We will have a home with him.

Our hearts yearn within us for the final revealing of all God’s mysteries, “Now we know only in part; then [we] will know fully, even as [we] have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). In the meantime, we confess: “Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am” (Philippians 4:13 The Message). Our God “will fully satisfy every need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). That is our confidence in Jesus, born at Bethlehem, crucified at Calvary, raised to life and ascended on high. He has promised, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:3). That is the culmination of the mystery of Christ, in which we have our hope.

Life’s greatest mystery has been revealed to us in the gospel—the good news of God’s grace in Jesus. That news, the revealing of that mystery, is the truth we hold dear in our hearts and the grace we share with others.

Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

* Sources: Cowper & Newton Museum, Poetry Foundation, Wikipedia biography and poem page

Nov

2024

Widows, weakness, and walking in faith

God is with those who are suffering – he has suffered with us and for us

Readings for the 25th Sunday after Pentecost:

When I lived in the South, I had an acquaintance in our neighborhood who was an airplane pilot. He was working for a large televised ministry, piloting the private plane used by the ministry’s leadership. His mother watched the televangelist’s broadcasts. She was a devout believer in God, and felt that the ministry was doing God’s work. She was on a fixed income. Her Social Security benefits were not large. Nevertheless, she regularly sent in large portions of her income as gifts to the ministry—more than she could afford. She had been doing that for years, since before her son started as private pilot for the ministry. The longer her son was working for the organization, the more her habit of donations bothered him. He was fine with supporting her from his own income with anything she needed. But from the inside of the ministry, he was seeing how the mail-handling staff was tasked to go through bags and bags of mail quickly and pull out the checks. The checks were directed for deposit to the ministry’s accounts. The letters sent with them mostly were ignored. A handful of prayer requests were plucked at random from the hundreds of letters, so the preacher could feature those on air. The rest of the letters and prayer requests were thrown away without being read by anyone.

The pilot’s mother had a heart devoted to Christ, and surely the Lord was with her and loved her—whether or not she was sending in donations to the TV ministry. The duplicitous ministry, on the other hand, was veering away from truth and integrity and love. As the Book of Proverbs advises, “The Lord hates it when people cheat others” (Proverbs 11:1 NIrV). “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight” (Proverbs 12:22).

Eventually, the pilot walked away from his job with that ministry organization, because the arrogance and affluence of the top people—and their dishonesty—was so at odds with the trust and hopes of the people they were supposed to be serving. It’s not unlike the situation that existed when Jesus observed the way things were at the temple in Jerusalem many years ago. Jesus pointed out the contrast between the high and mighty religious leaders and the ordinary folks who came to express their faith. In that temple environment, Jesus publicly said to watch out for those who make themselves the center of attention in matters of religion. Beware of those, he said, “who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces” (Mark 12:38-39) and yet devour widows’ houses—taking their property from them, “exploiting the weak and helpless” (Mark 12:40 The Message). Jesus focused his attention on a poor widow who came and put into the temple offering two small copper coins, worth the equivalent of a penny. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said, “this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury” with amounts they could afford from the abundance of their wealth. Out of her poverty, this faith-filled widow was putting in “everything she had, all she had to live on” (Mark 12:42-44).

The people who looked like they were the most important in the goings-on at the temple in Jerusalem were really only self-important. They were proud. They were puffed up. As Scripture has said in another context: “Their spirit wasn’t right in them. … Wealth is treacherous; the arrogant do not endure” (Habakkuk 2:4,5). “But the righteous will live by their faith” (Habakkuk 2:4).

Let’s take another example, going back about 900 years before Jesus’ ministry in Judea and Galilee. A king named Ahab had come to reign over Israel, with fortresses/palaces in the cities of Jezreel and Samaria. King Ahab enhanced his power by marriage to a Phoenician princess named Jezebel. Jezebel made her country’s worship of Baal and Asherah (fertility deities) a prominent part of her reign with Ahab (cf. 1 Kings 16:31-34). Ahab and Jezebel sat in the power positions and seemed like the important ones in Israel.

Bernardo Strozzi, Elijah & The Widow of Zerephath, 17th century

But that’s not how our Lord saw things. Through Elijah, the LORD announced that the opposite of fertile harvests and abundant blessings would be happening for them. Elijah prophesied, “As the Lord the God of Israel lives …there shall be neither dew nor rain these years” (1 Kings 17:1). Elijah became public enemy #1 of the Ahab and Jezebel regime. During those years, Elijah took refuge at the home of a widow in the coastal city of Zarephath, which was actually located in Jezebel’s home territory. It wasn’t where you’d expect to find an ally for the LORD’s prophet, but the LORD told Elijah, “I have commanded a widow there to feed you” (1 Kings 17:9). And indeed she did. She had almost nothing left when Elijah encountered her. She was gathering a few sticks for a fire. She planned to use her last little bit of flour and oil to make one last meal for herself and her son before they succumbed to starvation. Elijah offered her a promise from the LORD: “The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the LORD sends rain on the earth.” (Cf. 1 Kings 17:10-16.) Later in their time together, the widow’s son became severely ill and died. Elijah prayed, “‘O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.’ The Lord listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived” (1 Kings 17:21-22). The widow’s faith was strengthened further in the LORD God of Israel (1 Kings 17:24). Life was not easy for them, but the LORD was with them.

Where was God in Elijah’s day? Was he with the rich and powerful, the high and mighty? No. Those at the top may have thought they had it all—but it was not by God’s blessing. An unassuming widow found favor with God. A faithful prophet found favor with God. They were the ones actually experiencing God’s blessing.

Where was God in Jesus’ day? With society’s policy makers and self-satisfied religious leaders? No. A worshipful widow, trusting God to meet her needs, was noticed by Jesus and held up as an example.

Where is God today? Do we look for God’s presence and signs of God’s blessing in the wrong places? Do we revere the wrong people or look in the wrong direction for what it means to have a blessed life? We give TV coverage to a billionaire doing the first-ever civilian spacewalk (in a flight he paid for on another billionaire’s rocket ship) and think, “Wouldn’t that be so cool if I could do that?” (See BBC story, 9/12/24.) We heap our adoration on rock stars and pop stars and country stars and sports stars and movie stars and dream of living a life like theirs.

But where does God truly show up and make his presence known in our world? “This is where God shows up: in the confessing of our sins, and the bearing of one another’s burdens, and being there in solidarity with those who are bearing crosses. That’s where God shows up” (Tripp Fuller, Faith-Lead, 2024). Another insightful writer has said, “God is more likely to be found in the lives of people at the bottom of the ladder where life is messy, than at the top where life is comfortable and secure. These hurting places are the arenas where Jesus lived, worked, and taught, and this is the arena to which his followers are called” (Kurt Struckmeyer, FollowingJesus.org, 7/1/2018).

Think of what it was like when Jesus himself was on this earth. Who seemed important then? At the time of Jesus’ death, who seemed like the winners and who seemed like the losers? Didn’t it seem like the Roman empire and the Roman governor and the mobs who screamed against Jesus had all the power? That Jesus and his followers were nobodies, rejects, worthless? Where was God when Jesus was suffering? You could even hear Jesus cry out in anguish and abandonment, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) But his Father was not abandoning Jesus forever. The divine Spirit would invigorate him again. Jesus was doing what he was doing—suffering and dying—for us, to redeem us. He came to us in our world because our world is full of misery and death. As human beings, we have flesh and blood and are subject to death. So Jesus came and “shared the same things, so that through his death he might destroy the one who has the power of death … and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14, 15). Christ offered himself once, for all time, to bear the sins of all humanity. And the resurrected Jesus, having dealt with human sin and misery by his own suffering, promises us that he “will appear a second time … to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Hebrews 9:28).

Pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, while he was imprisoned by the Nazi government that later would put him to death, wrote in a letter from prison:

God allows himself to be edged out of the world and onto the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which God can be with us and help us. Matthew 8:17 (He took up our infirmities, and bore the burden of our sins) makes it crystal clear that it is not by his omnipotence that Christ helps us, but by his weakness and suffering.
This is the decisive difference between Christianity and all religions. Man’s religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world [wanting God to show up with some miraculous, immediate solution.] … The Bible, however, directs us to the powerlessness and suffering of God; only a suffering God can help. … The God of the Bible conquers power and space in the world by his weakness. …
Humans are challenged to participate in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world. … It is not some religious act which makes a Christian what he is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world. … One must abandon every attempt to make something of oneself … [and take] life in stride, with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness. It is in such a life that we throw ourselves utterly in the arms of God and participate in his sufferings in the world and watch with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, and that is what makes a human and a Christian.

(Letter from 1944—see D.Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 1997)

Let me close by saying this:
You might be a widow struggling with loneliness and limited resources.
You might be a common laborer, figuring out how to make a living and make ends meet.
You might be a farmer, navigating the uncertainties of unpredictable weather and an unpredictable economy.
You might be a parent, at wits’ end trying to manage family life and all its worries and difficulties.
You might be a child, not sure yet where or how you fit in or where life is going for you.
You might be a neighbor or friend, seeing other neighbors and friends who are hurting and wanting to help them—even though you may be hurting too and wondering why life is so hard.
You might be anybody, facing shortages, facing sickness, facing loss, experiencing all manner of the things that go wrong in this world. But you have one certainty: Jesus has experienced all these things and more, and he sees you. He knows you. He is with you. We do not have a Savior who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, our troubles, our struggles, our feelings of unimportance and helplessness. “We have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16).

As people of God, we carry one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), and together we all carry our burdens to Christ, who indeed does give rest to our souls (Matthew 11:29).

May

2024

John 3:16 – Father, Son, and Spirit in Action

Trinity Sunday was observed this week. The Gospel reading for the day included a well-known and well-loved passage from Scripture, John 3:16. I’ll share here a message based on John 3:16, pondering the actions of the Triune God on our behalf.

For additional thoughts for Trinity Sunday and season, see also the post, “We trust in a God who goes beyond our understanding.”

God Loves You

In the town where I grew up, it was not uncommon to be stopped on the street and asked, “Are you saved?” (The questioners were students from a small Bible college in the town.) You won’t find the question, “Are you saved?” as a mission strategy used by any of God’s witnesses or apostles in the Bible. You will find them, time and again, telling and retelling the simple, straightforward message of why we needed Jesus and what Jesus did for us. God’s message is not a question, “Are you saved?” but a declaration: “You are saved!” God doesn’t interrogate us, pressuring us to make decisions we don’t have the spiritual power to make. Instead, he tells us where we stand when we are standing outside of his grace, and he tells us how we are rescued by his amazing grace.

The message God speaks to you again and again in Scripture is that he loves you. The most famous such Bible statement is John 3:16. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

That one sentence is the Word of God in a nutshell. It holds within it a complete story of how much we needed God and how much his love has done for us. God loves us so much that he, the Father, gave up his Son. God, the Son, gave up his life. God the Holy Spirit gives us life when he brings us to believe in what God has done in Jesus. God—the Father, Son and Spirit—in threefold fashion is our Savior from the sin and desperation in which otherwise we would perish.

Let’s look at the love of the Father first. God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son. Amazing. Simply amazing. For one thing, we marvel at the relationship between Father, Son and Spirit who exist in one Being. We stand awestruck at that thought. We never fully fathom how God can be how he is—but he is! And then we’re amazed at the grace of God, that he would give up his Son, who is one with the Father, letting his eternal Son die in order to rescue us. We did not live to please God; we live to please ourselves. We are people who are ruled by our desires—desires that fight against God so that we do not and cannot obey God’s laws (see Romans 8:5-7). And yet God loves us! What grace! It is undeserved and unappreciated, but God loves us anyway. Like a father of runaway children who left home to live in the streets, God loved us even though we made ourselves unlovable. He kept his arms open to receive us even though we told him not to wait up, that we weren’t coming home. God loves us like a Father who never gives up on his children—and gave his most beloved Child, his own eternal Son—so that we could be his children and included in his family. “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are” (1 John 3:1).

And Jesus, God’s own Son, was a willing participant in this plan. Jesus did not object to his role in our redemption. He looked straight ahead and hoisted the cross on his shoulder and began to drag it to the place where he would be executed as the ultimate act of God’s love for sinners. Even before it happened, Jesus matter-of-factly told his disciples, “The Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him” (Mark 10:33-34). When one of his disciples said, “No! Never, Lord!” Jesus scolded him for thinking that way, for not having God’s plan in mind (cf. Matthew 16:21-22). “Christ loved us and gave himself for us,” is how Scripture tells the story (Ephesians 5:2). No one took his life from him; he laid it down of his own accord (John 10:18). The apostle Paul pondered on the magnitude of what Jesus did, saying, “Rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:7-8). That’s an amazing amount of love—God the Son gave up his life to make us sons and daughters of God with him, when there was nothing inherently in us that made us worthy of such a gift.

And there’s still more. God, who sent his Son from heaven, who gave his life on the cross, is not content to leave it at that and then let it up to us from there. He brings his love to us personally. He pours out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he gives to us (Romans 5:5). The Holy Spirit gives us life from God. Notice something in the familiar words of John 3:16, that whoever believes in God’s Son (Jesus) shall have eternal life. Believing in Christ is not something we, of ourselves, have the power to do. “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3). We were dead in our spirits, but God made us alive with the Spirit’s message of Christ. The Bible says it quite plainly: A person “without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:14 NIV). We needed the Spirit to take the blindness from our eyes so we could see God, to lift the veil of deadness from our hearts so we could believe in God.

The Father loved us and gave up his Son. The Son loved us and gave up his life. The Spirit loved us and gave us the gift of faith, so that all the love of God would be revealed to us and believed by us. God loves us through and through, from start to finish—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As I said at the outset, there’s no question about whether or not you are saved; there is a definitive answer, a declarative statement. God loves you and has saved you in Christ and has convinced you of that truth by his Spirit. God’s love is not a question; it is a fact, a certainty.

Still, even though we know this, our fragile hearts find ways to question God, to question whether God really loves us. You know how it goes, something like this: God, you say you love me … but then why, God, is my life so difficult? How come people who don’t seem to care about you get all the breaks in life and I get nothing? How come I have to struggle and scrape to get by? You say you love me, God, but I have a hard time seeing it. If you love me so much, why don’t you make my life better?”

Why do we ask such questions? Why do we make such accusations against God? Why do we find ourselves doubting his love? Because we look for evidence of his love in the wrong places. We look for evidence of the wrong sort. We look for evidence in terms of earthly things and earthly advantages and earthly successes. That typically isn’t the sort of evidence of his love that God gives.

Let me ask you this: Would you say that God the Father loved his Son, Jesus? Yes, of course. He even said so for people to hear when Jesus was on this earth. When Jesus was baptized, God’s voice was heard from heaven, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love” (Matthew 3:17). There were two other occasions later in Jesus’ time on earth when the same thing happened—God spoke from heaven and said, “This is my Son, whom I love.” God loved Jesus; we’ll take that as an undeniable fact.

Yet Jesus said of his own life on earth, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). Jesus had no mansion, no castle, not even a house. He went from place to place all the time. At the end of his life, Jesus’ wardrobe consisted of the clothes on his back. And those clothes were stripped off of him and divided up by soldiers who crucified him. Jesus was stripped naked and nailed to a cross and hung up to die.

God loved Jesus. How could God allow his own Son whom he loved to be treated like that? Because God had a higher, better, bigger goal in mind. Jesus would die without a thing in this world to his name, but would rise again to life and have us as his own. He and we look forward to eternal pleasures in the kingdom of heaven (cf. Psalm 16:11).

God isn’t so much concerned about how nice your house might be on this planet, or how much luxury you can afford, or how many clothing choices you have when you look in your closet. Oh, he will give you enough to get by—you can thank him for that. But all that stuff is surely not the main way in which God wishes to show love to you. His love to you is mainly in Jesus. His love for you is intended to connect you to him for eternity. His love to you is most concerned with preparing a place for you in the mansions of heaven, not making sure you’re comfortable in some suburban subdivision here below. If you look for God’s love in terms of what kind of house you can afford and what kind of car you drive and what kind of friends you have in your neighborhood, you’re bound to be disappointed. Look to God, instead, for the best of what he has to give you:

Love that is constant in Jesus even when persons in this world seem not to love you.
Life that is guaranteed by the Holy Spirit even when what you experience in this world seems to be one failed promise after another.
A relationship that is solid with the Father in heaven even when relationships on earth with family and friends are cracked and strained and unstable.

Don’t look for evidence of God’s love merely in people and things—see the evidence of God’s love in God himself, in what he has done. God so loved the world (and God so loved you) that he gave his precious Son, Jesus Christ, to secure eternal life for you.

God loves you. If you ever have any doubt about that, look at what the Father did. Look at what Jesus did. Look at what the Holy Spirit has done and is doing. Salvation is not a question; it’s the deepest, greatest truth in the universe. God loves you in Christ and has made you his own by his Spirit, and you will live forever in him. Hang onto that love—the best love there is, no question about it.

God works in mysterious ways – leading us to his grace

God is with those who are suffering – he has suffered with us and for us

God Loves You

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