God so loved the world….that He gave.

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There is a reason that John 3:16 is one of the most well known and best loved verses in the bible.  This verse tells us that God showed the extraordinary depth of His love for us by giving us His only son….as a sacrifice for our sins.  He delights in, and desires a relationship with us His children, but we cannot maintain a relationship with God on our own.  It took the sacrifice of God’s own son to make the relationship God desires with us possible.

He knows us by name.

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Another promise from God that we learn from Moses’ life is what He tells Moses in Exodus 33:17.   Moses had asked God for something, and God’s response was that He was pleased with him and that He knew him by name.  This means much more than He knows our name.  To say that He knows us by name means that He knows everything that makes us unique and everything there is to know about us-good or bad.  He knows us better than we know ourselves, and still is pleased with us and takes great pleasure in us as His children.

The mercy of our Father.

Posted on by ourdan5

Thought for the day:  I need more mercy from God than I will ever be required to show to others.                                                                                                                                                   God tells us through James (2:13) that mercy triumphs over judgement.  He does not ask us to do anything that He Himself has not done for us-in abundance.  He is indeed our merciful Father.

The gentle whisper. The still small voice.

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 God the Father loves us so much.  He could easily overwhelm us with His power, but He usually does not do that.  In fact, most of the time, just the opposite is true.  There is a story in I Kings 19 about Elijah.  First, the winds came and tore the mountains and rocks apart.  Then the earthquake came, and then the fire.  These verses tell us that God was not in the wind, He was not in the earthquake, and He was not in the fire.  Then…..a gentle whisper, a still small voice.  That was how God came to Elijah.  Nowadays, we are so busy and have so many things going on, that we can easily miss God speaking to us as a Father.  He wants to speak to us in that gentle whisper, in that still small voice.  But, to hear Him, we are going to have to take time out of our day to stop and be quiet, so we can hear Him speak.    He wants to speak to us words of comfort, words of hope, words of a Father to His child.

Our Father, who art in heaven.

Posted on by ourdan5

The Lord’s prayer is another example of how much He loves us, and the kind of relationship He wants to have with each of us.  God is infinitely greater than any leader there has ever been-whether it be the President of the United States, the King or Queen of England, etc.  In order to meet the President of the United States or the Queen of England, we would probably have to jump through a lot of hoops, and follow a lot of protocols.  Yet, when Jesus taught His disciples (and by extension, us) how to pray, Jesus taught that God simply wants us to come to Him like we would to our own fathers-no jumping through hoops, and no protocols to follow.  So, enjoy what the Lord’s prayer tells you.  He is God your Father, and you are His child.

What is not deserved. What is not earned.

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God, being God….I owe him absolute allegiance, absolute obedience.  Yet, He calls me “friend.”  I do not deserve it, I did not earn it, but this prodigal Father calls me His friend, demonstrating the lavish nature of His love.  Now, you might question that God calls us His friend.  In the Old Testament, it says that God spoke with Moses face to face, as one would speak with his or her friend.  And, in the New Testament, Jesus calls His disciples His friends.  So, we see, and must recognize both sides.  That God is Holy, and we must revere and obey Him.  But we also see this delighted Father, who desires to be our friend!

The God who satisfies completely.

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Psalm 103:5 in the Amplified-C version tells us that it is God who satisfies our mouth [our necessity and desire at our personal age and situation] with good so that our youth, renewed, is like the eagle’s [strong, overcoming, soaring]!  He is that interested in each of us individually, and He knows what we need and what are our hearts’ desires.

Our Father still delights in us, even when things do not go as expected…even when things don’t go as we would like them to.

Posted on by ourdan5

Something happened a couple of days ago, and it reinforced the fact that I need to learn to rest and trust in God my Father, even when things don’t go right, and things happen that don’t necessarily feel good.  Even when things do not go exactly as we would like them to go, nothing of significance has changed.  Our Father still delights in us His children, and our Father God still sits on His throne.  One of His greatest delights is in transforming us into the image of His Son.  That is the greatest thing He can do in our lives.  But, if you look at the life of Jesus Christ His Son, His life did not appear to go perfectly.  But, without those things that we would not consider the perfect life, we would have no hope.  His sacrifice is what gives us hope and life.

The Great Exchange

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  Another aspect of the delight that our Father takes in us-another truth about this Prodigal Father-is that He took our sin and put it on His sinless son, and in exchange for that considered us as having His son’s righteousness.  We are considered righteous in God’s eyes.

The Prodigal Father

Posted on by ourdan5

  Many of us know the parable that Jesus taught-the story that many of us know as the parable of the prodigal son.  If you look at the definition of prodigal, it could very well be the parable of the prodigal Father.  “Prodigal” can be described as extravagant, lavish, generous, or unsparing.  All of these descriptors can very well describe God and His love towards us.  He was all those things when He gave his only son as the sacrifice for our sins.