Every journey has to have a destination and with a destination, you have to know which direction to go. Map quest and GPS has helped us to find businesses and each other’s homes, but how do we find our way back home in the spiritual journey of life?
The Bible reminds us that the way back home is through faith in Jesus Christ. Our faith is like magnetic north of a compass. However, sometimes the compass of life gets off and loses direction. Maybe another magnet has gotten too close, something of the world that keeps calling us to follow it, instead of the compass point of our faith, Jesus. When that happens, like the prodigal son, we get lost and we can’t find our way home. However, it is the call of home, the memories and recollections that keep us searching and moving and journeying.
We must remember that no matter what we have done or how bad we have been, God loves us “anyway.” Also, we must remember that we do not have to be anything special or have done anything special, for God to love us. God loves us “as is,” with all of our faults, both visible and hidden. That’s God's unconditional love!
In order to experience the fullness of God’s unconditional love, which comes in the form of forgiveness through Jesus Christ, we have to open the door. Jesus is standing at the door knocking and we have to open that door and let Jesus into our heart and into our life. We open the door because that’s the only way that God’s “anyway love” and “as is” love can begin their work of cleaning up our lives through the “Redemptive Love” of Jesus Christ.
Opening the door may sound like a contradiction and a condition in the whole idea of God’s unconditional love, but it is not! God is going to continue to love us “anyway” and “as is” because that is God’s nature. 1 John 4: 8 reminds us that: “whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
If we leave the door shut and locked then we won’t reap the fullness of God’s love. We won’t experience the benefits of that unconditional love or even the reason Jesus came, and that would be a shame. It would be like going to a 12 course dinner and leaving after the soup and salad. You would experience some of it but not the main course or the dessert. You would experience some of it, but you would miss out on the best parts.
Not unlocking the door, not opening our hearts to Jesus also keeps the compass out of whack. All that garbage in our lives weighs us down. The stink and the corruption leak over into every other aspect of our lives, even when we don’t want it to. We have to get rid of it!
But thanks be to God that God uses so many ways and so many people to help us not only hear of God’s love for us, but who also help us accept that love. The Bible is God’s “Love Letter” to us reminding us of how wonderful it was at home, telling us God loves us “anyway” and “as is”. All God really wants is for us to return home and Jesus was that “Love Letter” made flesh, that “Love Letter” dressed in the rags of our brokenness and sin. Jesus came to lead us back home.
Remember that Jesus is knocking on the door of your life. When you open the door and let Jesus into your life, you are forgiven! Open the door locked in your soul and let Jesus clean out that room, so you can experience the fullness of God’s forgiveness and unconditional love! See you in church!
http://pastorjimrobinson.podbean.com/
http://www.gbgm-umc.org/mesquite
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