Dear Friend, Brother, Sister,

Before you read this, please know this was one of those times when I didn’t know what would come next, writing as God inspired me to do.  I hope I was able to put on paper what God put on my heart.  God bless you!

Our God is an amazing and awesome God!   He encompasses so much that we can’t truly comprehend how great He is or how great His love for us is; but even though I can’t comprehend how high, wide, deep, and vast His love is, I can tell you what I believe about that love.

God is such a loving God that He created the perfect world for us to live in.  The Book of Genesis tells us all about Creation and the perfect place known as the Garden of Eden.  He filled His perfect world with land, sea, sky, plants, trees, fruits, flowers, and animals of every kind.  He gave us the sun to give us light and warmth by day and the moon to shine by night.  By this light can be seen the magnificent beauty of all His creation, and all the wonderful colors!  Then, once everything was just how He wanted it, He created man. 

Before He brought us into this world, He made a perfect place for us – just like parents-to-be create the perfect environment for their baby – God made a place for us in this big universe that had everything we could want, and more.  Finally it was time to birth man.  Carefully God created us, bringing us into life by His own breath!  You and I are here today because God breathed His life into us! 

Everything is great and wonderful so far, according to Genesis, man hadn’t been here long before he introduced sin into this perfect utopia God worked so hard to create!  WHY WOULD GOD ALLOW THAT?   That’s a topic of debate for many, here’s my answer from my Spirit-filled heart:

God could have created us to be programmed people that acted perfectly, didn’t mess anything up, and lived exactly how He wanted us to live.  However, HE IS A LOVING GOD.  Where’s the true love in programmed people?  We might have acted pleasing to Him, but we wouldn’t have been capapble of showing Him honest, heartfelt love.  God loved us so much that He was willing to allow for His perfect world to be messed up, to allow us to be imperfect people, if that’s what it took to allow people to have the capacity to CHOOSE to love Him truly and unconditionally like He loves us. 

This brings us to the topic of FREEWILL.  God allowed us to be able to make choices.  The choices we make show Him whether we love Him or not, and whether or not we love Him enough to live in obedience to Him. 

The God I see, who loves you and me, loves us enough to endure the hurt, pain, frustration and anger we cause when we live out of obedience to Him, and worse yet, when we reject relationship with Him.  He could have protected Himself from the pain we cause and protected His perfect world by programming us to be perfect with no ability to choose, no freedom.  Instead, because of His great love, He allowed for our mistakes, imperfections and sins, and went one giant step farther.  He allowed His Son, whom He dearly loves, to come down to this earth to be with us, to be God in the flesh, in order that we could be forgiven of our sins and made into new spiritual beings through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  I say He loved us enough to send Jesus because God had to do that knowing that Jesus would be treated cruely and horribly, loved by some and hated by others, and despite living His life in a sinless way, His Son would not only be brutally handled and killed, but die as a criminal after being mocked and beaten for being the Son of the Father and the King of the Jews. 

WHY DID THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN?  To save us from ourselves.

Jesus was a sin offering on behalf of each and every one of us so that when we sin, make mistakes, do horrible, awful things, we can be forgiven.  We don’t have to live lives cut off from God. That’s not what He wants!  He is our loving Father!  He wants to be in relationship with us!  The Bible tells us His mercies are new every morning!  Jesus said we have to forgive others 70 x 7 times.  Believe me, that’s nothing compared to how many times our Father has forgiven each of us! 

The God I see who loves you and me loved us enough to offer us a perfect world; give us freewill so we have the ability to choose to love Him unconditionally just as He loves us; to send Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice for the sins God knew we might commit; and to offer us everlasting life with Him through our belief in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, who arose 3 days after His death on the cross, lived among us for a short time, and then ascended into heaven where He sits at the right hand of God, the Father until the day He returns to take us away to a new perfect place, the New Jerusalem, heaven, that is being prepared for us.  God loves us so much that even though we messed up the first perfect place (Garden of Eden), He’s gives each day as a new chance to claim our place in His kingdom so that one day He can welcome us to the perfect world He so wants us to have. 

And in the meantime, He’s working every day blessing those who love and serve Him, and watching over all His children, showing us miracles and blessings every day, and wanting nothing more than to gather us all into His loving arms. 

Dear Lord, I hope each person who reads this will pause to consider how much You love them and be encouraged in that.  I pray that as Easter approaches and we prepare to celebrate the life, death and resurrection of Christ, that we will truly appreciate the love you showed through Your Son, our Savior, and in that, more will be saved.  Thank You for loving us so much and giving us each day as a new chance to live in Your good graces.  In Jesus Name I pray.  Amen.