Rescued by Love

It is said that love is what makes the world go around.  Indeed, love is the fuel that you and I need daily to get us up in the morning and to keep us motivated through the myriad of challenges we encounter each day.  But, it seems to me that us mortals have very different definitions of love than God does.  Webster’s online dictionary gives us a number of different definitions of love such as; personal ties (like that of a mother and child), attraction based on sexual desire, affection based on admiration. Another set of definitions have to do with objects of attachment, devotion or admiration, like when we say that we love our car or love our sports team.

However, the biblical term ‘love’ when talking about God in relationship with you and I is ‘agape’.  It is defined as the love that brings  caring regardless of circumstance.  Now, how opposite is God’s love than our love!  God loves us because that is his nature.  1 John 4:8 says “God is love,”  He cannot not love, all of his actions are born out of love.  He loves us even though we are naturally enemies with God.  Pastor John Piper wrote, ““…love is from God the way heat is from fire, or the way light is from the sun. Love belongs to God’s nature. It’s woven into what he is. It’s part of what it means to be God. The sun gives light because it is light. And fire gives heat because it is heat.” (Piper, J. (2009). Finally Alive: What Happens When We Are Born Again (p. 154). Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications Ltd.)

When you get discouraged with how things are going in your life, to whom or to what do you run?  The thought that God loves us motivates us to take the next step.  Listen and read this verse until it soaks into your heart that he loves you, “In this the love of God was made manifest (to make clear, to make evident, and to reveal) among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” Read it again, slowly.

Does that thought just blow you away!  God loves you so much that he sent Jesus on a rescue mission for YOU!  I have heard Billy Graham say many times that even if you were the only person on the planet God would have sent Jesus.  This is how much he loves you. You are important to God. You are the apple of his eye.  He is the only One who can do for you what you can never do for yourself.

I read a story recently about a Swiss mountain climber by the name of Alfred Hellepart.  Alfred was part of a group of climbers sent on a mission to rescue two Italian climbers who had fallen and were stuck on ledges of the North Face of the Eiger.  He describes the experience of descending on a rope down into the crevice of the mountain. “As I was lowered down the summit … my comrades on top grew further and further distant, until they disappeared from sight. At this moment I felt an indescribable aloneness. Then for the first time I peered down the abyss of the North Face of the Eiger. The terror of the sight robbed me of breath. …The brooding blackness of the Face, falling away in almost endless expanse beneath me, made me look with awful longing to the thin cable disappearing about me in the mist. I was a tiny human being dangling in space between heaven and hell. The sole relief from terror was …my mission to save the climber below.”

That, my friend, is what Jesus did for you to express God’s love.  He descended from the glories of heaven to the scwalor of the earth to save you.  I don’t know what you are facing today. But I do know that God is there for you.  He is worthy of your trust. He loves you like no one on this planet ever could.  So, put on foot in front of the next and walk in that love today!