PRAYER ROOMS
- 9am – Tuesday, online only
- noon – Tuesday, in-person & online for Sanctuary leaders only
- 1/31/24 – Prayer Learning Lab: How to hear God’s Voice (register for headcount)
The journey of the Scriptures begins with us in loving communion with God (Gen 1) and ends with us in loving communion with God (Rev 22). The great theme of human history is God pursuing this course of love. God expresses His heart of extravagant love towards us in redemption by loving us even when we were His enemies, by loving us when we were powerless, by loving us when we had completely gone our own way and had no sense of our need for Him. If God offered us the staggering gift of Jesus and salvation when we had done nothing at all to deserve it, then we must not believe the lie that His love for us changes when we fail to deserve it after we know Christ. We can never deserve God’s love! Instead, we must embrace the beautiful promise that He is stubborn in His delight to love us. That is His true nature spilling out into His world.
David Benner begins his short book, Surrender to Love, with the following observation: “Imagine God thinking about you. What do you assume God feels when you come to mind? When I ask people to do this, a surprising number of people say that the first thing they assume God feels is disappointment. Others assume that God feels anger. In both cases, these people are convinced that it is their sin that first catches God’s attention. I think they are wrong — and I think the consequences of such a view of God are enormous.”
One of the most famous verses in the Scriptures says: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God loves, and love gives.
This is what God is like.
Brennan Manning describes it this way:
“If we continue to picture God as a small minded bookkeeper, a niggling customs officer rifling through our moral suitcase, as a policeman with a club who is going to bat us over the head every time we stumble and fall, or as a whimsical, capricious, and cantankerous thief who delights in raining on our parade and stealing our joy, we flatly deny what John writes in his first letter (4:16) – ‘God is love. In human beings, love is a quality, a high prized virtue; in God, love is his identity.”
God is constantly moving towards us in love. He loved us before creation. He loved us in creation. He wept over the brokenness that has come to His creation, and He is working within redemptive history to bring us to Himself. He never ceases to deal with us in love. This vision of God is the throbbing heart of the New Testament where all things are propelled by the agape love of God.
HOW MUCH MORE
(see this past Sunday’s teaching)
And so as we prepare to pray:In Matthew 7:11, Jesus invites us to contemplate our own capacity for giving good gifts to our children despite our imperfections. If we, as flawed human beings, can extend generosity and love to those we care for, how much more can we trust our perfect Father in heaven to graciously give us good gifts when we approach Him in prayer? This “how much more” principle unveils the depth of God’s love.
In Galatians 4:7, the Apostle Paul further unpacks the transformative power of this phrase. We are no longer slaves to fear or performance; instead, we have been adopted as sons and daughters of the Almighty God. As heirs, we stand to inherit the unimaginable riches of our heavenly Father. This “how much more” revelation dismantles any notions of unworthiness, replacing them with the truth that we are deeply loved, fully embraced, and recipients of an eternal inheritance.
Consider the pinnacle of this truth in 1 John 3:1: “The Father has given us His love. He loves us so much that we are actually called God’s dear children. And that’s what we are…” This verse echoes the heartbeat of “how much more.” We are not merely tolerated; we are dearly loved children of God. Our relationship with the Father isn’t based on our performance or merit but on His boundless love. In His eyes, we are not just loved; we are His cherished sons and daughters, embraced in the security of His everlasting love.
LET’S PRAY
Often we experience a rise and fall in our affections even for those people that we love the most. If we are in a bad turn of circumstances or a terrible mood, we struggle to summon warm feelings even for those who are most dear to us. It is easy to assume that God must work the same way. But hear this promise:
“All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ps 25:10, ESV). He is not shaken in His love for you by changes in circumstance or mood. He is not a Father that loves you, but doesn’t like you. You are not barely tolerated. He delights in you. This certainly doesn’t mean God ignores our sin, or neglects to correct and discipline us, but infinitely beyond even the most compassionate human Father, God always deals with us in loyal love.
In Our Time 