Now is as good a time as any to reflect on whether you are exhibiting the love of God found in Christ and shining your light or are being a clanging cymbal as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13. Your speaking in tongues and prophesying and knowing all mysteries amount to nothing if you do not have love for others whom you can see and yet profess to know and love God whom you have not seen.
As we approach the years end and make New Years resolutions for 2023 determine to make love the centerpiece of your life. This is regardless of whether it is reciprocated or not. This should extend to even those who do wrong to you. Forgive and love. Let your first love resurface. Let your light shine in a world where darkness and despair rule the headlines.” Be blessed!
1 John 3 (NIV) 1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
The most powerful words apart from the names of God and Jesus are the two that begin the Lord’s Prayer. Our Father. What a powerful declaration. The very declaration makes the gates of hell tremble as every power of darkness acknowledges who we are are when we declare that we have a father, and not just any father, but the father of lights, who resides in glory, majesty and power.
Indeed, when we take a minute to fathom the depth, width and breadth of the declaration that we are children of the most powerful yet loving being in the universe, who actually is its creator and our father, we cannot help feel a sense of joy, pride, security and freedom. In the same breath we acknowledge something even greater…the overwhelming sense of the love that God has for us and everything that He created. We often hear of the wrath of God, and in many cases we see it in the Bible, but let us take a minute and consider this. The word of God clearly declares that the Lord takes no delight in the death of sinners.
We can then get the sense that the wrath of God is not the angry tantrum of a displeased entity or person, but rather the immeasurable grief of a Father being faced with the prospect of being eternally separated from that which came from His very bosom, His very heart and the core of His being and was formed in the womb only to be born as a child into this world, and now is lost. Indeed, as the Father cried out and ran towards His lost son who returned, so is the joy in our Fathers heart when His own return back into His arms of love. What an awesome picture, of a redeeming God who delights in the salvation of His own from the destruction the enemy so gleefully plans for for His children. Our Father.
In these two words rest our very being and existence. The declaration that He is not just a father, but OUR FATHER, who art in heaven! In Him we live and breathe and have our being. He has numbered every last hair on our head. He knows us by name. He loves us! We are His children and He is OUR GOD! Halleluya! Be blessed as you believe!
