Heart Tracks - Worthy

 "To know the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it." Ephesians 3:19......"The love of Jesus is so inclusive that it knows no boundaries. At the point where we stop loving and caring, Jesus is still there - loving and caring."......"During all of His ministry I do not think that Jesus ever helped a 'worthy' person. He only asked, 'What is your need? Do you need My help.' " A.W. Tozer

I'm not sure if there is anything in His Word that we preach, teach and proclaim more but understand and live in less than the love of God. Our ideas on it run the gamut from syrupy sweet, to distant and harsh. Permissive or oppressive. Soft or hard. Free or earned. One thing I believe is common for us all is that we allow ourselves to receive so little of it. We take it for granted, see it as our due, and so miss the great cost and passion with which He has given it and continues to give it. We can also so concentrate on that cost as to think we must measure up to that sacrifice before we can ever live in that love. I think the majority of us are somewhere in the middle of those two views. Paul surely realized this seeing as how so much of his writing was an exhortation for the Church to truly know and live in the fullness of His love. The letter to the Ephesians is a plea and invitation that they enter into all the wonder of His life and love. That exhortation continues to speak an invitation for you and I to do the same. Yes, as Paul writes, we can never know completely the unending vastness of His love, but we can know it, experience it, and live in it. And we can live in it now. Love as defined by Him and Him alone. Love that if we will trust Him in it, will never disappoint. But we will not find that out until we choose to fully receive and know that great love. Echoing what I wrote a few days ago; we behold that love in His Word, we believe the truth of that love, and then we become receptacles and vessels of it in every area of our lives.

I love what Tozer says in the above quote. Our love has boundaries, even in how we love Him. His does not. Our boundaries  not only keep us from giving to and receiving love from others, they keep us from giving to and receiving love from Him. That is why wherever we are, whatever we have done, wherever we have failed, sinned, or turned away, we will find Him there. Still loving, still giving, still willing to receive us to Himself. Yes, there need be at times confession, repentance, and if needed, an acceptance of consequences. But it is His very love that makes all these possible, and wraps and protects us from the full severity of those consequences. What the hatred of hell would wish to do to us through them.

To know His love is to know we aren't worthy. But in His Son, who is worthy beyond words, we can receive all His love to all of ourselves. This is the life of fullness. Do we know and have such life, such love today? The old hymn rings true, "Such love, such wondrous love. That God should love a sinner such as I - How wonderful is love like this." The heart of the Father cries out that we should know this love. Does our heart cry out to receive it?

Blessings,
Pastor O