Thursday, April 13, 2017

Yeah, You

Yeah, You

So some 30+ dude who was “God in flesh” died and came back to life before you even existed. What does that have to do with you?
Well, He did it for you. Yeah. YOU.
That’s what it has to do with you.
God loves you and died and rose again for you.
I know you’ve heard it said a million times. The commonality of the phrase has been to its detriment because even though it is so absolutely true, it wears thin after a while. We become so accustomed to hearing it that eventually, the phrase begins to bounce off the walls of our hearts.
But remember that first time you had the realization of His mighty love for you? It didn’t bounce off, it pierced so deeply that it stole away your breath.
Easter is upon us, and with it, another reminder of His love. It’s not a surprise that Christians focus on this. I mean, Scripture spends a lot of time talking about it:
Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. -1 John 3:16
For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” -John 3:16
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” -Romans 8:38-39
Those are just three of the dozens of verses referring to His love for man.
So yeah, we get it. The Guy who died loves people.
But it’s more than that, He loves us.
It’s easy to think about God’s love from a detached perspective, to convince ourselves that God wasn’t thinking of everyone 2,000 years from when He died on that cross. But here is how I know that He was:
2,000+ years later, He chose to create us.

Let’s talk about this for a second: GOD created YOU and ME. The same God that Scripture calls “all-knowing” and “all-seeing” and let’s not forget the part about “beginning and end.” He transcends time which mean He saw you before you were born.
This also means that He knew every single time you would do something bad, something malicious, something wicked.  Then, knowing all of that, He not only died for you, He created you.
This all-knowing, time-transcending God could see every single time you would hurt Him or the people He loves, but He still loved you enough to create you.
He could have chosen to leave me an imagination in His mind. He could have left me a “more bad than good, definitely not worthy of My sacrifice” passing thought.
Instead, He examined the imagination of me and thought: “I died and rose again so that the people I love could one day join me in Heaven. I love Rachel enough to endure all the pain she will cause me in her life. I love her enough to give her life, a life which she will use to stab me in the back, to hurt her family and friends with harsh words, to commit acts I find abhorring in what she considers ‘secret.’ I love her enough that, knowing every single terrible thought she will ever have, I still want to give her the chance to live.”
And He thought the same of you, too.
So the next time you hear about His love, let it sink in just how deep that love is. He created you. He didn’t have to, He wanted to.  And He wanted to so that He could have the joy of loving you.
His death and resurrection weren’t just some random acts 2,000 years ago.
They were for you.

-Written By Rachel Carpenter

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