Tag Archive for love of God

Your Wrath Against Sin

2018-10-19 Devotional Companion to Revelation, Devotional with Hymn No comments

A prayer response to Revelation 15:5-8,
a prelude to God pouring out His wrath

Father, Your wrath against sin is
deep,
total, and
irreconcilable.
You are eternally, unalterably opposed to
anything that
harms Your dearly-loved children or
separates them from You.

Your wrath against sin is not
a temper tantrum or
a passing mood.
It is a fierce,
holy,
burning,
almighty love
that refuses to accept anything but
our very best in You, our
fullness and
completeness and
unbounded joy.

Our freedom from sin is precious to You.
You bought it
with Your Son
and paid for it
with His life.

Thank You, loving Father,
for Your uncompromising wrath against sin.
You deliver us completely from its awful curse.
Praise to You! 

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Your Ceaseless, Unexhausted Love
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Ferocious Love

2017-02-27 Devotional with Hymn No comments

Transcendent Father, unseen God,
You longed for us to know You.
You let us touch You with our senses
in creation and
at Mt. Sinai,
through the tabernacle and
through Your prophets.
But all the while You promised to share Yourself fully through
a person who was to come,
a man filled with Your own Spirit.
This specially Anointed One, this Messiah, would
live among us and
rule over us.
His Kingdom would extend
through every nation and
through all time.
He would bring all the blessings You had ever promised.

As the centuries passed, Your promises of this Messiah became
increasingly detailed and vivid.
We longed for His coming.

But when He arrived, we didn’t recognize Him.
He was not what we expected.
You are Almighty God, and
Messiah was to be Your full revelation of Yourself.
We expected Him to be
a commanding leader,
a powerful warrior,
an unstoppable conqueror.
We thought He would be like a roaring lion that
no one would dare challenge.
We thought He would be fearfully holy and
bring fiery judgment to all the wicked.

But instead, He arrived as the weakest and lowliest of all human creatures –
a helpless infant born of
an unmarried peasant girl.
He wasn’t a king – not what we considered a king.
There wasn’t anything regal about Him.
He was a rural laborer with an accent to match.
He wasn’t a mighty warrior.
He was a gentle healer,
a teacher with little formal education.
He didn’t live in a palace.
He was a homeless wanderer.
His holiness wasn’t fearful or awe-inspiring.
He befriended sinners, whom respectable people avoided.
He socialized with them and received them warmly.
The only people He condemned were
the ones we considered the most religious.
He scolded them for their pride and hypocrisy.

This Messiah didn’t prowl and roar like a lion.
In the end, He died like a lamb,
meek,
silent, and
defenseless.

He gave us a living picture of You,
but You were not who we expected.
We expected to experience Your
fiery,
ferocious,
all-conquering power.
Instead, we experienced Your
fiery,
ferocious,
all-conquering love.

Listen and sing:
Hymn: All-conquering Love
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

The Christ of Holy Week

2015-03-03 Devotional with Hymn No comments

from A Christ-centered Year

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10, NIV)

During Holy Week, Jesus is the Love of the Father,
humbly submitting to death on the cross.

Watch as Jesus burns with zeal for His Father’s house and
cleanses the temple.

Listen as He urges His disciples to
pray boldly,
patiently endure persecution, and
remain faithful.

Breathe the alabaster fragrance of a woman’s lavish worship
in preparation for Jesus’ burial.

Be humbled as He bows to
model servanthood and
washes your feet.

Stand helplessly as He is arrested and led away.
Hear His silence in the face of brutal injustice.
Sense His deep loneliness.
See His agony.
Watch Him die.
Feel the awful stillness as a huge stone seals in His lifeless body.

This is the measure of Jesus’ love for the Father.
This is the measure of His love for us.
This is the new standard for our love for each other:

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35, NASB)

Listen and sing:
Hymn: Here Is Love
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

God, I Want to Know You

2013-09-29 Devotional with Hymn No comments

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. (Psalm 139:1, NIV)

God, You created this entire universe,
so vast and beautiful,
so mysterious and wonderful.

You also created me.
You conceived me before I was born.
You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
And You patterned me after yourself.

You love me.
You know every thought before I express it,
every word before I speak it.
Yet You love me.

And You want me to know and love You.
You want that more than anything.
My Creator, I don’t want to ignore such an intriguing possibility.

God, I want to know You.

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: Come and See the Works of Our God
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics

Ambassadors of His Love

2013-09-01 Devotional with Hymn No comments

Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that
one died for all, and therefore all died.
And he died for all, that those who live should
no longer live for themselves but for him who
died for them and was raised again.
All this is from God,
who reconciled us to himself through Christ and
gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors,
as though God were making his appeal through us.
(2 Corinthians 5:14-15, 18, 20a, NIV)

The mighty,
amazing,
lavish,
burning,
boundless love of Christ
is making His appeal to a dark and dying world
through us.

Our daily lives are
His face,
His voice, and
His hands.

We are His ambassadors,
sent to show the world that He is indeed
complete forgiveness and
tender compassion.

Listen…and sing if you want:
Hymn: Blazing Love
Recording
Printed Music & Lyrics