The most amazing thing about God’s love is that is is unconditional.

God doesn’t say, “I love you if . . . ” There are no “ifs” in God heart. His love for us doesn’t depend on what we say or do, on our looks or intelligence, on our success or popularity, or even our performances. His love for us existed before we were born, and it will exist through all of our mistakes. His love exists from eternity to eternity, and is not bound by time or circumstances.

Jesus showed exactly how much He loves us this way, while we were still living in sin apart from Him, He died on a cross for us. (Romans 5:8)

Now, unconditional love doesn’t mean that og doesn’t care what we say or do. No Way! Love without condition isn’t love without concern. Unconditional love isn’t unconditional approval. God doesn’t approve of our disobedience.

Loving unconditionally means that God loves us even when we blow it. God waits for us with love and anticipation the way the father waited for the prodigal son to return. We must rest in the assurance that, even through we sin, God’s love never fails, He never gives up on loving us. We need to know that, because sin has a way of making us think that no one can love us after all the bad stuff we’ve done.

Even though God doesn’t approve of our mistakes, He still loves us so very much! God’s love is the magnet that draws us back to Him.

Related Text:
Romans 5

If you weren’t afraid of failing, what would you attempt today?

In Matthew 25:14-30, a wealthy businessman entrusted his entire estate to 3 key workers. He gave the first worker 5 talents, the second worker 2 talents, and the third worker 1 talent.

A talent is believed to be worth about 1 year’s salary. Knowing that helps us understand exactly how marvelous of an opportunity this was for the workers. It was a defining moment in their lives that gave them the chance to:
1. test their skills
2. practice good judgement
3. profit from their investment

Two of the workers accomplished all three of these things, but the third was afraid of failing his master. In his fear, he decided t play it safe and bury the money he was given. Playing it safe got him called wicked and lazy. (Matthew 25:26)

Fear of failure always makes us play it safe. Without the courage to start, we are already finished. Everyone will either overcome their fears or give into them.

Refuse to let fear stop you from making God a return on His investment. His investment is YOU. How we use the gifts that Go has given us is a matter of utmost importance. We all could use a little reckless faith.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20
“You are not your own; you were bought at a price.”

John 15:9-15
9 “I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. 10 When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. 11 I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! 12 This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. 13 There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.

True love requires sacrifice. It’s true. To truly give of your love, you must be willing to sacrifice for it. According to the dictionary, the word sacrifice means “destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else”. In Other words, to give up something.

Sacrifice, that’s kind of a hard word for most of us. Really, it’s a word we don’t like to use all that often. We don’t want to sacrifice much, not money, not time, not our possessions, and not our lives. To truly understand what sacrifice is, and what it would look like in our lives, we have to consider what God sacrificed for us. Stop and think for a moment. Stop and just thank Jesus for being the ultimate sacrifice for us. Without Christ, we are nothing (John 15:6). He paid it all so we could be free. Take time right now to praise and worship Him for His most excellent sacrifice.

One of my favorite songs from Third Day is Offering. Here are a couple lyrics that penetrate my heart:

“Who am I that You should suffer
Your very life to set me free
The only thing that I can give You
Is the life You gave to me

This is my offering, dear Lord
This is my offering to You, God
And I will give You my life
For it’s all I have to give
Because You gave Your life for me”

Have you sacrificed your life and they way the world tells you to live? Have you declared to God that you will live your life in obedience to Him who died for you?

Related Text:
2 Corinthians 5:15
“And Jesus died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”

When Noah preached about the coming rain, it was a symbol of blessings.

After the flood, God said, ” . . . and I will remember my covenant with you and with all living creatures. Never again will the floodwaters destroy all life. When I see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth. Then God said to Noah, ‘Yes, this rainbow is the sign of the covenant I am confirming with all the creatures on earth.’” Genesis 9:15-17

When God turns something that should have destroyed you into a blessing, you’ll be able to look back and say, “The suffering, even though it was horrible, did me some good. It taught me to pay attention to God.”

Without suffering, we would never discover:
1. that isolation creates determination and makes us lay hold of God
2. the power of prayer
3. what God can accomplish in the face of adversity
4. that God alone brings us through suffering

Suffering will come, but after the rain comes the rainbow! God has a way of turning suffering into blessing.

Related Text:
Psalm 119:71
“My suffering was good for me,
for it taught me to pay attention to your decrees.”

God sometimes post-dates His promises.

He takes His time getting us fully prepared for our destiny, even when we feel we’re more than ready. We may think God’s promises and plans for our lives are delayed, but they are only delayed according our time; God’s timing is perfect. This tends to be one of the hardest things for us as Christians to wrap our heads around: Completely trusting in God that His plans and His TIMING are perfect.

God finds some of His most useful people in some of the worst places. He found Gideon hiding in a cave and He found Rahab working in a brothel. But no matter where He finds us, He can always use us if we are willing to follow His direction.

Is that where you are? Have you been asking God why are you stuck where you are when your passions are somewhere else? Joshua was stuck for a time. He went to scout the Promised Land, and when he and Caleb came back to the Hebrews, they were met with opposition and unwillingness to trust God. (Numbers 13-14)

Don’t despair! As hard as it may be, trust in God. “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” – Philippians 1:6

Related Text:
Psalm 36:7 “How precious is your unfailing love, O God!
All humanity finds shelter
in the shadow of your wings.”

38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

1 John 4:16-19 (The Message)
13-16This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.

To Love, to Be Loved
17-18God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment— it is a sign of a person not yet fully formed in love.
19We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.

Unconditional love is the way God loves you and me. God’s love isn’t based on grades, personality, looks, money, past actions, present actions, future actions, friendships, athletic performance, business ethics, or anything.

READ it right there in one of the related texts, Deut. 7:7-8 (I basically says, God loves us because He loves us. Wow, wrap your head around that. The reason the Bible gives for God loving us is that it’s because He loves us!)

If God loved you for what you did, that would be called conditional love. But God’s love is unconditional because His love has no strings attached. Sure there are things that you and I do that God doesn’t like, but He will never keep His love from us!

NOTHING you or I do will separate us from God’s love. Believe it or not, there is no sin that is too gross, no language that is too bad, no action that’s too evil, and no thought that’s too wild to stop God from loving you! Wow, doesn’t that make you feel all warm and cozy, and want to crawl up in the lap of our Heavenly Father!

Digest this, God shows us unconditional love! Got it.

Reread Romans 8:35, 38-39 from the perspective as YOU showing God unconditional love. (I know, did your mind just melt!?!?)

Nothing that we go through, nothing that happens to us, no amount of pain we experience should cause us to stop loving God.

God loves us no matter what. Now throw that amazing love right back at Him, and love God no matter what you are going through.

Persevere!

Related Text:
Deuteronomy 7:7-11
John 3:16-19
Romans 5:8-11
Ephesians 2:4-10

“God-loyal people, living honest lives,

make it much easier for their children.”

In 1927, a Georgia real estate and insurance company folded, short-changing 500 stockholders. The owner, a man called Mercer, was a person of integrity who vowed if possible to repay everyone every single penny. But despite his best efforts, his company never did make a comeback. After he died, his son remembered his father’s vow and 28 years later deposited a check in a Savannah bank to reimburse every last stockholder.

That young man was the successful singer/songwriter Johnny Mercer. One of the songs he wrote from which he earned the royalties to pay the stockholders back was “Accentuate the Positive.”

When you go, leave your children – both biological and spiritual – something more important than money to remember you by; leave them a legacy of integrity: “God-loyal people, living honest lives, make itmuch easier fr their children.”

The person who can’t be trusted on all counts can’t truly be trusted on any. Ethical principles are not flexible. A little white lie is still a lie, no matter what kind of excuses we make; theft is always theft, whether it’s one dollar or a million. Character is made in the small moments of our lives when no one is there to check up on us.

Sociologists suggest that people of poor character might have been different if they’d grown up in a better environment. Character is a choice. Our circumstances are no more responsible for our character than the mirror is for our looks. What we see only reflects what we are – and what we are is what we’ve spent our lives building.

And the choice of making Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior is the foundation on which to build character!

Related Text:

Matthew 7:24-27

What does it mean to be invited into the kind of life that Christ lived?  Before your answer, read this story by Tony Campollo:

“Joe was a drunk, miraculously converted in a street outreach mission.  Before his conversion he’d gained a reputation as a derelict and dirty wino for whom there was no hope.  But following his conversion to Christ, everything changed.  Joe became the most caring person at the mission.  He spent his days there, doing whatever needed to be done.  There was never anything he was asked to do that he thought was beneath him.  Whether it was vomit left by some hungover alcoholic, of scrubbing filthy toilets, Joe did it all with a heart of gratitude.  He could be counted on to feed anyone who wandered in off the streets and help them get settled in even when they couldn’t take care of themselves.

One evening, after the mission director delivered his evangelistic message to the usual crowd of sullen men with dropped heads, one of them looked up, came down to the altar and kneeled to pray, crying out to God to help him change.  The repentant drunk kept shouting, ‘Oh God, make me like Joe!  Make me like Joe!  Make me like Joe!’  The director leaned over and said, ‘Son, wouldn’t it be better if you prayed to be made more like Jesus?’

After thinking about it for a few moments, the man looked up with an inquisitive expression and asked, ‘Is He like Joe?’

What does it mean to be invited into the kind of life that JEsus lived?

It means to love like Jesus loved.

Related Text:
John 13:34-35
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Knowing when to say “when” can save your life. Self-deceit is the hallmark of a person experiencing “The Martyr Syndrome.” This is a person who believes beyond a shadow of a doubt that they have to be involved in everything at their church and serve in every capacity. This just cannot be done, eventually you will succumb to stress and resentment.

If you’re going to survive, you’ve got to discover your own pace – not be driven by what people may or may not expect of you. Look out! Fatigue is dangerous; when it walks in, faith walks out. Furthermore, when we’ve burned out, we’re attacked by old enemies we’ve already conquered.

The person who is experiencing “The Martyr Syndrome” more often than not begins to forget why they are serving in the first place. They forget that Jesus is their focal point, and they get wrapped up in the “job” instead of being wrapped up in the one who died for them.

Step back, take a look at why you do what you do, and ask God to help you decide how to make the best impact for Him. Sometimes, doing more doesn’t do any good.

Nurtured and rested people are much more effective in every area. Their relationships with God are stronger; their families are happier; their health is better; they live longer than the martyrs. Why? Because they’ve truly found the place of rest.

Related Text:
Matthew 11:28-30
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Tamar, a gentile, married Judah’s son, Hur.  When he died leaving her childless, custom dictated that his brother, Onan, marry her to give her a child and make her part of their family.  That way, Hur’s inheritance could be passed on to her son.

However, Onan refused to do his part, and God killed him.  Onan, it seems, wanted another wife, but just for show.  He wasn’t worried about ensuring the inheritance for Judah’s son.  Onan wouldn’t carry out the duty that God had instructed to him.  (Genesis 38)

Why do you attend Christian gatherings (like church, church events, youth camps, women’s and men’s ministry weekends)?  Is it just for the fellowship and simulation of being around people you like, or is it because of what you will learn and how you will grow closer to God?  what good is it if the praise band brings you to your feet in praise to God and the pastor brings you to your knees in conviction and self-realization, yet you continue to go home every time unchanged??

At some point, the Word we hear has got to be conceived in our hearts and bring forth fruit.  At some point, we have to become so saturated with divine purpose that we begin to change how we live, how we think, and how we surrender to God instead of ourselves.  Then, not only will we be living for the Spirit, but we will also be a witness to others, imparting God’s greatness on all who take notice.

After Moses had met God at the burning bush, he sent Moses back into Egypt and brought the people back to see what he saw and to touch what he touched.  That is what we have been called to do; to be changed by God and to show others how we have been saved so that God may save them as well.  There are places that God will take us that we can go back and bring others to show and reveal his greatness!

Related Text:
Romans 12:1-2