Faith is Loving God Back
It’s something we have to choose to do.
I posted the following last year during this Holy Week that leads up to Easter Sunday. It’s a good opportunity to pause and reflect on just how blessed we are.
True Love comes from God.
It is a part of his nature.
It is built into the fabric of the universe He created and is behind His declared laws — like the Ten Commandments and every other instruction He has provided us — all of it, although at times it doesn’t feel like it, is for our best good.
Many over the centuries have pointed out that True Love pursues the object of his love within certain self-imposed restrictions in order to always permit free choice.
This is the permission of the Beloved to reject God’s love and strike out on her or his own.
We need look no further than Adam and Eve choosing to disobey God’s clear instructions to see that (1) God accepts their decision to disobey, (2) their disobedience sets up a chain of horrific events, and (3) God changes his strategy on how he will be able to pursue people trapped behind enemy lines.
This, by the way, describes quite well where we live.
No longer does God walk physically with us as he did in the garden — except for that brief time when Jesus walked the earth.
And some accepted him by faith and others did not, on down to today.
And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.
Matthew 4:23-25 (ESV)
So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves.” And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”