Relentless Love

Why did God become Man? Why Jesus? Why the Catholic Church? Would it surprise you if I said the answer to all three of these is so you could be uniquely and repeatedly loved by God? Do you believe that? The thing is one has to be willing to go deep to experience God’s love profoundly! I’m not referring to a mind bending intellectual journey with Aquinas. I’m talking a spiritual and relational journey. There is no going deep without making time for silence. It’s in that time set aside for silence that you and God relate. It’s in that silence that telling prayer takes place, prayer that doesn’t help your relationship with God, but prayer so personal that it is your relationship.
 
My bet is we don’t really know how much we are loved. Have you anchored everything about your life on God’s love for you? What are you holding onto just in case this Jesus thing doesn’t work out? Everything you and I have in this life, we owe to God. The only thing you and I own is our sin. But here is the thing; it’s never really been about you being a good person for God. Virtue absolutely does matter, but not for the reason most people think. Virtue matters most because it frees us to truly be who we were created to be. Virtue frees you to love more like God. What it is really all about is Christ in you, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). It’s then that we can pick up our cross and follow him. And guess what, we don’t get crucified by being complacent and a wimp. We get crucified because we’re a threat to the establishment, to what’s gone wrong with love in our culture (and sometimes even in our church).
 
But here is the thing, what defines you and I, is not the worst thing we ever did. What does define us is we are a daughter or son of God. What defines you is God loves you. Your challenge is to believe that, to own that, and to live that.
 
In the back center of our nation’s currency it says In God We Trust. What does that really mean - candidly, not what we have made it to mean. Trust is ultimately the result of knowing you are loved.  Here is the thing we need to acknowledge, we don’t know how much God loves us. Let’s face the truth; God has given us His only Son (as a father, I can’t wrap my head entirely around seeing my child brutally tortured, mocked and hanging on a cross). God has given us His living Word in black and white (the Bible is the starting point for any true understanding of God). God has given us the bread of life – the body, blood, soul, and divinity of His Son (there is no life without this – John 6:53) . What more must God give you and me?
 
Jesus made it clear in Scripture that he came to reveal the Father ( Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father - John 14:9) . But do you realize the Father has given us everything through His Son, Jesus. To share Jesus is the most loving thing you and I can ever do. Ultimate freedom rests in this. If we truly want to lead others to Jesus, we need to be in relationship with him and learn from him how to love more and more like him, revealing the Father’s relentless love.