Our Inseparable Relationship (Romans 8:31-39)

God is love and His nature requires that He take care of His creation and to do so unconditionally. This means that no matter what a person does ... even if it's rejecting Him ... the Lord will not stop loving him. God loves us because we are His creation and He must forgive us and love us because it is required of Him. He could not stop loving us because to do so would go against His very nature. After reading this, some people are going to try to think of the reasons why they are the exceptions, why it is that God just cannot love them. But He rejects no one. God loves each of us, and the only thing that prevents us from experiencing that love is our own response to it. One way or another we will believe either our feelings or the facts of the Bible. And the Bible clearly says that God is love (1 Jn 4:8). He cannot relate to us in any other way. Even when He punishes He punishes in love. Go to 1Cor 13 and read the definition of what love is and then, knowing that God is love, substitute "God" for the word "love" (vv 4-8) and see just how God loves you.

Paul says that God is on the side of the believer (Ro 8:31). He gave up His Son to death so that we might be purified from all sin and enter into a personal relationship with Him. Jesus' sacrifice alone is proof of God's love, but there are countless other examples of His care and keeping recorded within the pages of the Bible. God has a perfect purpose and plan for every person's life. Through His sovereign control, He works every situation ... good or bad ... to our benefit and goodwill. (Ro 8:28). He is a loving Father who not only is interested in what happens to us, but He is actively involved in every aspect of our day-to-day life. Right down there in the nitty gritty, where the rubber meets the road. God cares deeply for every single person, whether they accept Him or not. He has sworn to care for us and He will not back down even if we reject Him. We may have to live with the consequences of our rejecting Him but our heavenly Father will always love us no matter what.

Some people read and intellectually believe every word of the Bible but still feel unloved because they judge themselves to be unlovable. Their doubt becomes a dam that keeps the flow of God's loving care from their hearts. The barrier will hold for as long as that person believes that he or she must deserve His love and care before they can accept it. But no sinner ever deserves pure love! God knows that and yet He freely gives His love anyway. We will never be worthy of His love but we can accept it when it's freely given. The choice is ours whether we accept it or not.

Well our big event at church happened yesterday. The Kick-Off Sunday for the 40 Days of Purpose campaign and what do I do???? Get the days mixed up!!! For eight weeks I've been praying and preparing for this event and I miss the start. Oh, I didn't miss the kick-off. I missed the first small group. See, yesterday was the kick-off and today started the first day of small groups but I thought that was the first Monday after next Sunday. Confusing, huh? Well, just know that I messed up and missed my very first small group DVD and discussion. How lame can a person get? That lame!

I had a great week last week. The 24-hour prayer vigil went without a glitch and I enjoyed all my time spent there and didn't realize we would be keeping the doors locked so I could have been down there even more than I was. But I closed it out Saturday at noon and then went downstairs to the fellowship hall to prepare for a funeral. The funeral was late getting started and so by the time everything was cleaned up afterward, it was after 5:00 and I was beat. Set my alarm early for the pancake breakfast and it was delicious. The sermon was great and the church was full. Did you catch that? The church was full. We weren't packed. But we were full. It was the way church is supposed to be!!! Praise God!!! The Celebration Service last night was just sooooo good. People who know me know how much I love music and love to sing. But the hard truth is that I simply cannot sing. I don't mean I don't sound good. I mean I SOUND HORRIBLE. I can't carry a tune being totally tone deaf the way I am and I can't keep a rhythm on my own. I'm good for a bar or two and then I'll get off. It's just a fact of life for me. Anyway, part of what made last night so special was that I actually sang a song. The music was so loud I wasn't afraid that someone would hear me and I was able to belt it out to my Lord and ended in tears. It felt so good to really sing a song to God. I've never done that before because I know how badly I sing. But I have the feeling I sounded just right to Him last night. It was pure joy. It was pure light. It was pure love. I came home so full of love and laughter I thought I was going to burst.

Then last night Michael and I caught a show on MSNBC that was incredibly touching and I ended that show in tears. It was just a very tender, uplifting show about dwarfs. But they prefer to be called "little persons." I would love to see it again. Here I complain about my life and can get to feeling so sorry for myself because my life is hard with my hearing loss. I didn't even know how hard hard could be until last night. The challenges they have to overcome every single day of their lives. One woman was only 36" tall and she had gone to school then college and became a teacher. Another man had become a pediatric orthopedic surgeon even though he was so short. He had married a woman of normal height and they had a daughter who also had short stature but they didn't mind. It was about conquering all odds. It was about excelling not just getting by. Maybe if I'd always been deaf it would be different for me. I look at things as all the things I can't do. They looked at things as just bumps in the roads of their lives. The woman who was only 3 feet tall actually met a man who was much taller than she was but he was still a little person. They had a great relationship. In the end he asked her to marry him and the show closed with him carrying her over the threshold in a very unorthodox method. I feel guilty for mourning my hearing loss.

Well so much for Monday. I allowed myself to sleep late this morning because I thought I didn't have a meeting or responsibility today. That's how I missed my small group. It felt really good to sleep but I wish I hadn't missed my meeting. Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it now.