Loved

Sunday, February 1, 2015

       Well, it is now time to wrap up this “series” on my lessons about believing that “I Am Who God Says I Am.”  I have learned and am, in fact, still learning that as a child of God I am BLESSED, CHOSEN, ADOPTED, ACCEPTED, REDEEMED, and FORGIVEN.  I pray that those of you who have been following along have also been blessed by these lessons.  They are not only mine, after all…God has not been teaching me so that I could keep it all to myself.  They are His words, His lessons.  Meant to be shared. 

         But one final truth remains to be imparted.  Not one of the former lessons mean anything without it.  I believe it can pretty much be wrapped up in the following passages:

 

“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love,

I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge;

And if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains,

but do not have love, I am nothing.

And if I give all my possession to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body

to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.”

 

“But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

 

1 Corinthians 13:1-3,13

             In other words, nothing is anything without love.  All the blessings and redemptions and forgiveness in the world are nothing if love was not the motivation behind them.  Being chosen, being adopted, being accepted…what would those be if the incentive was not love? 

              And how amazing that the One who blesses, chooses, adopts, accepts, redeems, and forgives us is the very One who created love.  He is Love, Himself.  This means that we can know, believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we are not only BLESSED, CHOSEN, ADOPTED, ACCEPTED, REDEEMED, and FORGIVEN, we are LOVED.  How can we be sure?

 “But God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while

we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

Romans 5:8