My Passion: to be God's love

You know, there are folks who blog for a living. That means they have to write something interested and entertaining everyday. I’m only bringing this up to say I respect them and enjoy their work, especially that of my favorite, Debra Legg at http://www.debralegg.com/. There are times when I fondly think of her as my liberal counterpart. So, I’m dedicating this post to her because it takes work to blog successfully everyday, a feat she accomplishes with flying colors and deserves honors for.

OK, on to my post now. I left off hoping that anyone following this might read Romans chapter five so I could more easily get my point across. These posts are not intended to be sermons or devotionals. This is simply me thinking out loud as I take the challenge our pastor gave us last Sunday: find your passion. After thought and searching, I realize and remember my passion is to become the kind of Christian that the Bible instructs us to be and says we can be.

Rom 5:5-8 – “And the hope does not put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us; for we yet being without strength, in due time Christ died for ungodly ones. For with difficulty one will die for a just one, (for perhaps one even dares to die for the sake of the good one), but God commends His love to us in this, that we being yet sinners, Christ died for us."
Notice that Christ died for us while we were described here as “sinners” and “ungodly”.

THAT is the kind of love I am talking about, the kind of love that I believe we are supposed to have. Now, don’t get me wrong. If the Bible defines certain behaviors as sinful, then, I believe they are sinful. I’m not promoting a wishy-washy religion that overlooks sin, expecting us to simply tolerate everyone and everything.  The kind of love that God has is the kind that realized the impossibility of human kind to deal with sin so he sent Jesus to do that for us.  Our job is to exemplify that love so folks can come to know him, and be delivered from sin.  To quote our Pastor Pat, "God loves me so much he takes me just as I am; he loves me too much to leave me that way."  You see, sin separates us from God so it should be our passion to pursue the sin-free, love filled life that is spelled out in Romans chapter five and the rest of the Bible.

If God’s response to our sin was to send us a Savior, what should our response be to those who are caught up in sin today? We don’t have to die for them because only Jesus’ blood takes care of that part of the redemption process, but we have a part to play: we are to be the hands of feet of Jesus to this world that has no clue who he is. Generations know him only as the center of a few religions. It’s our job to have such an intimate relationship with him that we become his love, the serving, giving, sacrificial love that changes lives. The world is sick and tired of words. The world is telling Christianity to put up or shut up. Not in a hateful way but in a desperate way. The world is desperate for that kind of love, that powerful love that the Holy Spirit has filled our hearts with (Romans 5:5). What are we going to do with it?
(Copyright-C.Jacobs 4/2010 (ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)