God's Unconditional Love

I know that I have written on this subject before, but the Holy Spirit has placed it back on my heart again. God's love is absolutely the most remarkable thing in all creation. When we really see the depth of His love it can almost be mind boggling. For us to get a true picture of who our Father is, we must be able to see this love. Praise His name for His guidance in revealing His love to us. You know as well as me, that we will never see the total depth and greatness of who He is, but seeing Him develop it in our lives is incredible.

Go back to the beginning with me when man sinned. It could have been over right there, but instead, our Father loved us so much that He overlooked what we had chose to do and provided us all a sacrifice to pay our penalty of of that decision. That's unconditional love. God put no expectations on us but took it upon Himself to give us what we needed. In enters His Son, Jesus Christ!! Because of His great love for us Jesus was able to go to the cross and sacrifice His life for us. There was no condition on our part for Him to do that, it was a enormous display of who our God is. There is no other that was capable of doing what He did, He was it.

If we look at our love, most of us would see a different kind of love. There is usually some kind of condition for our love to work properly. The biggest difference in our love verses God's love would involve one little word, judgement. You see we have this innate trait inside of us that always wants to judge. For most of us, we have become so good at hiding or justifying our judgement, we don't even realize we are!! Think about all our relationships, starting out with the ones at the top working our way down to the smallest. How do we respond to all those around us? Think hard and clear. Look at how we talk to each other and what our thoughts are about each other. Do we find ourselves thinking about the things people have done are doing to us. Is the way we feel parallel to how they treat and talk to us. Do we find ourselves getting upset when someone is mean to us? Does the hurt they cause us control our responses to them? Do we compare where we are to where they are, spiritually speaking. Is it easy for us to see what they are doing wrong or need to correct verses seeing our self? Do we have a tendency to take the scripture and hold against each other and use it for our benefit? Do we have a tendency to take the word and using it as a judging tool against each other?

I am convinced we can get caught up in what we understand about scripture and destroy the very purpose God left it for us. God doesn't take the word to use against us, He gave it to increase us in knowing Him. Love overcomes all!! Instead of us getting caught up in all the THINGS, the easiest thing for us to do is LOVE!! I don't care who it is, or what they have done, LOVE!! Unconditionally LOVE!! One of the quickest places to look and see our short comings is in our relationships with our spouses. Think about all the quarrels and arguments we have been in with each other. Has it not been because of what we feel has been done to us? We have been mistreated and it's not fair. So, to make things even out, or for it to be fair, they should receive back at least some form of treatment they have given out. (conditional LOVE)!! Not only do we do that with our spouses, but we do it with all those around us. It's not right for them to get away with treating people that way and they need to be taught a lesson. It's for their on good.(justifying why we do it). It sounds good it's just not right. Go back and think about our Father, if He had taken that same approach none of us would ever been saved.

Now, I think this is where the problem is. We haven't come to the point of allowing God to operate His love in us, instead we still operate out of our conditional love. Here is some great news, all hope is not lost, God is busy about revealing to us our conditional love and replacing it with His unconditional love. I am convinced that God isn't sitting still doing nothing. He is very busy turning us into exactly what He created us for. God hasn't saved us and then put us out here in a position that we can't succeed. He personally has taken the responsibility to change us and correct us. He is perfect in all that He does and you can be assured that you are part of what He is doing. Praise His name!! God has that perfect ability to reveal to us who we are and then remove it from us. Praise the Lord!! God is busy about showing us how we can't have any confidence in our love and then directs us to His. There is true JOY in His love. It sets us free. All of us. His love is easy and there are no requirements for us to receive it!! He gives it freely to all. When God does the work of bringing us to surrender who we are and trust totally in who He is, then He can glorify Himself through us. God can be seen instead of us. His ability flows through us and works perfectly. There is no struggle when He is in control. The struggle is during this development period where God is turning us into what He wants us to be. Don't become faint of heart during these trying times, instead get excited and know God is moving in your life. His great training is taking place in these times. Never allow Satan to fool you and cause you to start judging yourself, causing you to feel useless, instead direct him straight to Jesus and tell him to take it up with Him. This is not a battle between flesh and blood, but a spiritual battle that can never won by Satan. When we can come to grips with our inability to fight Satan by our self and realize that it's not our battle, we are well on our way to being able to live in this great victory that Jesus has already won for us!!

I close with this, the greatest witness we all have is for God's unconditional LOVE to be displayed continually with all we are in contact with. Never allow our conditional LOVE to react through us. Be still and know that He is God. Be patient and wait upon the Lord. Be slow to speak and quick to listen. When we slow down and listen to our Father, He will always give us the proper response. And it usually will never be what we would typically do or say. He is great and the only God!!

God loves you and me,

Stan