If God is Love ...
God IS Love. From the beginning right to the end, God is Love. He has always been Love and will always be Love. Love never fails.
Love is what inspired God to create us in the first place. Love is what inspired God to allow us the choice whether to respond to his Love or not. Love is what drove God to intervene in such a way that allowed us the full consequences of our choice if we chose not to respond to Him, yet provided an escape from that choice if we do choose to turn towards him. Love is what continues to allow us the choice to turn to Him and to his Love. From beginning to end, God is Love.
I have tried to paint the big picture of what I have come to understand about God and His Story, from beginning to end - God’s plan and purpose for humanity and his involvement in it. Perhaps looking at the big picture helps us see why, for now, we live in a world full of suffering and pain, why, for now, we live in a world where there is evil. Perhaps looking at the big picture helps us see how God is still passionately involved with humanity (even if he seems remote at times) and continues to invite us to connect with him in increasingly real and deep way.
As I said at the beginning, God has radically transformed my thinking. I feel like I am looking through a new pair of glasses and the purpose of this blog was to allow you to look through them. I hope that what you were able to see encouraged you and inspires you, as it did me, to hunger for more and more and more of this Love as a hallmark in my own life and to submit to this Love in increasing measure.
Who knows - I might have totally got the wrong end of the stick and misunderstood it all. And yet – I would never trade my new glasses. Ever. Finally things are beginning to make sense to me. Finally I feel I am beginning to connect with God the way he is, not the way I want him to be.
For me, getting a grasp of this perspective marks the only the beginning of what feels like a fabulous adventure. If any of the perspective I have tried to explain is true, it will have repercussions on every area of my life. It will shape the way my connection with God develops, it will shape the way I talk to him, the way I pray for the stuff going on in my life and the way I worship Him. It will shape the way I see the world and the way I see myself within it, the way I engage with it, the way I engage with church, with my neighbours and friends, with my children, my husband. It will shape the way I allow God to lavish his Love on me, the way I experience his Love, the way I allow his Love to transform me.
And it has! It has changed everything. All I can say is – I want more!
More of Him, more of His Love.
This is the last post in this series. Thank you for reading along, thank you for your comments. If, having come to the end, you have more comments or feedback of any kind, I would love to hear from you.
And now “this is my prayer – that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight” ... “that you, being rooted and established in love, may have the power, together with all believers, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses all knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God”. ( from Philippians 1 and Ephesians 3)
