"I Love You" --God

This morning the preacher brought a message that would be ending a series of messages called, "One Hundred Happy People."  You remember, perhaps, some time back I told you about the study centered around the "one another" passages in the Bible.  We have learned all sorts of things about ourselves, our family of Christians, and especially about taking our faith and devotion to the Lord into our communities.

We were challenged to bring some degree of happiness to the lives of 100 people, during a 40 day period of time.  In addition to learning, we are to cultivate relationships which demonstrate the living Lord in our actions, our words, and specifically in going the second mile to serve others.

While the entire study has been beneficial to us, knowing today's message was the final sermon in the series, I drove on to church wondering just how the preacher was going to tie all this into an Easter message......but he did!

If the message of the cross were to have one title which personalized God's plan for each of us, it would be the title, "I Love You"  (signed) God.  The familiar events of the final week of Jesus' life are clear to us.  We can give a daily account of the things Jesus said and did while he was getting closer and closer to the end of his earthly life.

Making the application of Jesus dying to pay the price for the sins of all mankind, definitely show this was the greatest act of love.  While we deserved the death-sentence because of our sins, Jesus went to the cross and died in our place. All of these events come to us as God's love message.  He loved each of us.

Now here is how today's sermon made sense with the Easter story.  There is a section of Scripture in 1 John that makes it all clear.  "This is what real love is: It is not our love for God, it is God's love for us in sending his Son to be the way to take away our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us that much we also should love each other."

Because God loved us first, we should love each other.  Our love for others is the reason behind the entire series of messages.  We have learned about forgiveness and acceptance, important necessities for us to have in our relational contact with others.  There is no better way to bring it home to everyone than with the truth of God's love for us, our love for him, showing us how we are to love one another. 

We who have no problem saying we love God, have big problems loving others, especially when they have wronged us or hurt us in some way.  It's as if we get to pick and choose who is actually worthy of God's love.  But do we get to choose a select group to love, bringing about another group which we think doesn't meet our standards?  Read the verses again.  God's love to us is seen in sending his Son to take away our sins. If God loves you and me that much, then we should be loving each other.

There are lots of ways we can meet the challenge of making people happy.  The primary one is to tell them how much God loves them.  The next best way is for us to demonstrate God's love through our lives of caring, helping, serving, and yes, loving one another.

<ronbwriting@gmail.com>