PERFECT LOVE...

God is wrapped up in being who He is... God, and He knows what He loves about Himself.  He loves being gracious and compassionate and extending mercy.  He loves pouring out grace.  He is intensely... passionately interested in us, delights in us and thinks about us constantly.  God’s love is never less than 100 percent: He loves me and you 100% right now, just the way we are this very moment and every moment we live... 100% Love that doesn’t know how to be otherwise.  He is unchanging and consistent: When we do good He approves of us and when we do bad He accepts us, but the love we experience is the same.  Nothing we can do will make God love us more and nothing we can do will make God love us less. His love is rigidly inflexible, unmovable, unshakable, constantly constant, unchanging and forever to us, so that we are secure in our knowledge of who He is... God is Love!  He loves us all the way... all the time. God takes pleasure in the fact that He is the unchanging Lord whose perfect agape love drives our fears away...

DRIVES OUR FEARS AWAY...

THE NATURE OF GOD ONE: COMPASSION

God has a tremendous, immense, immeasurable, eternal compassion that is always greater than our sin. His grace not only abounds... it super abounds, it is always more than sufficient to cover even the vilest of sins. Compassion is one of those virtues we hope we never need, but in reality... due to our fallen nature, need constantly. God’s compassion is deep sympathy and strong desire: Deep sympathy and sorrow for the plight of mankind accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate it. God and Jesus demonstrated the ultimate compassion of the Godhead at Calvary: Nothing can ever speak stronger to God’s sympathy for and alleviation of man’s fallen nature. Compassion does not end at salvation, but rather begins there. God likewise has great sympathy and concern for the things we must suffer for His namesake, the transforming pressures and adversity of life that saint’s must all endure. God is said to be “gracious and full of compassion”, and Jesus was “moved with compassion”, weeping openly for the plight of the people. “Compassion” in both the Greek and Hebrew speaks of God feeling deeply in empathy for our condition and yearning greatly to restore us to Himself. God’s passionate mercy... Grace extended, answers the compassion of God’s great heart with forgiveness, goodness... kindness... love. No one will ever feel hell’s flames because of their sin, but rather because of their refusal of God’s forgiveness... refusal of His amazing Grace extended in His compassion...

AS WE BEHOLD HIM...

WE BECOME LIKE HIM...

THE NATURE OF GOD TWO: PASSION

God is whole heartedly passionate about us... we consume His thoughts. We need only look at Psalm 139 to see the consuming passion of our Father toward His children. He continually searches our hearts, knows our comings and goings... our daily routine, clears a smooth pathway for our life, knows our thoughts before we speak them, and has encompassed us with a protective hedge. His hand is upon us... ever holding us... ever leading us, and His spirit lives within. He never sleeps in His watchfulness over us. There simply is no escaping His presence, whether we feel it or not the ever-present God is, well... ever-present with us! God’s thoughts toward each of His children are precious and greater in number then all the sand of all the seas on planet earth. He has been thinking about us since before time... since before creation... planning a future full of hope for us in eternity past, millenniums before we existed. On the great mantle of God, over the hearth by which he warms His feet, are countless millions of bottles, each labeled with the name of one of His children, and each containing tears. Never think this God of love who created us ... who counts the hairs on our heads, is not passionately consumed by us... for we are His jewels...

AS WE BEHOLD HIM...

WE BECOME LIKE HIM...

THE NATURE OF GOD THREE: FORGIVING

God is scandalously forgiving.  His mercy burns as it destroys shame. The biblical concept for sin is derived from an old Archery term for missing the mark... missing the target, like a traveler who leaves the straight well-worn pathway for a twisted hilly trail that causes him to lose his way. Sin is missing God’s eternal standards... transgression of thought, word or action that is contrary to the eternal laws of God... leaving God’s pathway. We human kind are not only born into sin, we are born with a capacity to sin often and sin badly... sinning is the one thing we all do quite well. We need only watch the evening news to see the human capacity for evil.  But God... He forgives the unforgivable. His forgiveness embraces the misstep, the shameful, the detestable, the cruel, and the horrendous, embracing all sin equally, covering sin with His love and casting sin into the sea of forgetfulness... never to be remembered by God again! And, His forgiveness is infinite, from everlasting to everlasting... from eternity past to eternity future, as far as the  east is from the west... that’s how far He has removed our transgressions from us. Our God is self-defined as merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in mercy... He has plenty, for He is full of pity and compassion and tender mercy... full of it! His forgiveness flows from His mercy... His grace extended, and is His total favor given gladly to the undeserving heart. His mercy can never be fully understood or properly articulated in this life... it can only be experienced. You see, we deserve nothing... we deserve Hell... But our great loving Daddy has chosen to give mercy... forgiveness, to all who chose to accept His free gift of salvation! God’s forgiveness is truly scandalous... outrageous... shocking to the natural mind as it destroys our shame and replaces it with hope. That fact alone should bring forth eternal praise from God’s children.

AS WE BEHOLD HIM...

WE BECOME LIKE HIM...

THE NATURE OF GOD FOUR: GOOD

God’s goodness is outrageous and shocking... actually disreputable to the religious minded. From the “It was good” of creation through the smiting of His beloved Son at Calvary, through the adversity that tries, tests and transforms His children, through the last drip of grace enabling the last redeemed person to walk through heavens gates, to eternity in the place God has prepared for us... God is unswervingly good. It is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the breath of life and a world in which to live it... to give us salvation from Self, and transformation into His very own Nature... to give us forever life in an eternal paradise especially prepared for us. The “gotcha” is not in God’s goodness but in our understanding of the word “good.” Good, according to Webster, is that which is morally excellent, virtuous, righteous, pious, honorable and worthy. So, anything that moves us Godward, in God’s perspective, is good... anything... even if it hurts. God’s ultimate good is seen in His relentless molding and shaping of our life – like clay pots on a potter’s wheel -- using the circumstances of our life to conform us into the likeness of Christ... releasing more and more of the implanted “good” of Christ’s nature... becoming good like our Daddy. Good, according to man, is that which satisfies his wants... his lusts for the toys and thrills of life. Herein is the rub as they say, for we have a broken “wanter” and it takes a lot of pressure to get our mind off of things below and onto things above. But God’s unending goodness will not leave us the way we are... He is determined to make us His jewels. God’s goodness is extravagant... unconventional... remarkable and extraordinary, in a word... outrageous: “I looked and behold, a great multitude which no one could number... the martyrs who came out of the Great Tribulation and washed their robes in the Blood of the Lamb”, and... It was Good!

AS WE BEHOLD HIM...

WE BECOME LIKE HIM...