How He Loves Us

Ten years ago, my Dad took over the pastorate of our home church, Peerless Road Church of God of Prophecy, in Cleveland TN. Dad is an evangelist at heart. The church was a great group of people, with some wonderful "fellowship" groups and friendships, but it seemed like it had been years (at least from my perspective) since any non-Christian had found a relationship with Jesus. For the first year or more of Dad's pastorate he instructed the worship leader to include one specific song in almost every service. That song was entitled "God Loves People" I can still hear the chorus in my head. The lyrics were:

God loves people more than anything
God loves people more than anything
More than anything He wants them to know
He'd rather die than let them go
Cause God loves people more than anything

After a year of wearing this song out, we finally convinced Dad to please stop making us sing it. At the time I was sick of hearing it. But, the message stuck. God really does love people more than anything.

For the past couple of weeks my thoughts have turned back to that powerful truth. I've been listening to Jesus Culture's perfomance of the song "How He Loves Us" (check out the youtube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoC1ec-lYps) which really drives home the intensity of the love of God.

Every Christian is familiar with John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life (NLT). We can quote it robotically. But how often do we stop to think about the impact of that verse? God loves each individual person that has ever lived so much that he sacrificed his own Son in order to rescue them. That means God radically loves my neighbor, my realtor, my doctor, my friends. God radically loves each and every person that I come in contact with. God radically loves me.

That love should be life changing. That love should rearrange our priorities. Truthfully, that love should be life consuming. Paul says it best when he wrote that "For the love of Christ compels us because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died. And he died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again."

The love of God is pushing me. I want it to consume me. I want to know how wide, how long, how high and how deep it is. I want to experience it. I want to know it.

And I want to give it away.