Your daily goal:

Con’t…taken from… The Search For Significance, by R. McGee

The love of God and His acceptance of us are based on grace, His unmerited favor.  They are not based on our ability to impress God through our good deeds.  But if we are accepted on the basis of His grace and not our deeds, why should we obey God?  Here are six compelling reasons to obey Him:

#1  God’s Love

Understanding God’s grace compels us to action because love motivates us to please the One who has so freely loved us.  When we experience love, we usually respond by seeking to express our love in return.  Our obedience to God is an expression of our love for Him (John 14:15, 21), which comes from an understanding of what Christ has accomplished for us on the cross (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).  We love because He first loved us and clearly demonstrated His love at the cross (1 John 4:16-19).  Understanding this will highly motivate us.

The great motivating factor is missing in many of our lives because we don’t really believe that God loves us unconditionally.  We expect His love to be conditional, based on our ability to earn it.  Our experience of God’s love is based on our perception.  If we believe that He is demanding or aloof, we will not be able to receive His love and tenderness.  Instead, we will be either afraid of Him or angry with Him.  Faulty perceptions of God often prompt us to rebel against Him.  Our image of God is the foundation for all of our motivations.  As we grow in our understanding of His unconditional love and acceptance, we will be better able to grasp that His discipline is prompted by care, not cruelty.  We will also be increasingly able to perceive the contrast between the joys of living for Christ and the destructive nature of sin.  We will be motivated to experience eternal rewards where neither moth nor rust destroys (Matthew 6:20).  And we will want our lives to bring honor to the One who loves us so much.  (cont’ Monday).

1 John 4:15-19   John wrote…   If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.  God is love.  Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.  Love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him.  There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The man who fears is not made perfect in love.   (wow!!!!)

My friends…re-read and meditate on those verse in 1 John.      Do you see what we have ‘in’ Christ?…do you see it?   We are held in a perfection of love that we really do not fully comprehend…held safe in the arms of our loving God.   God’s love holds us and because it is perfect…the result is that we should realize that we do not have to fear punishment…because God diverted the wrath that we were due and placed it in on Jesus….Jesus ‘paid’ the penalty we deserve.   Jesus took our punishment…we get forgiveness and eternal life and the perfect love of the Father.  Since the punishment has been fully paid…we have the opportunity to see ourselves perfect in His love.   Oh…what can be sweeter than to know how much we are loved by God.

Father…I pray that as we absorb and experience the ‘love’ that you have poured out for us …as we ‘discover’…how wide, deep, and long it is….help us to ‘go out’ and share the light of that reality with those who remain trapped within the darkness of false beliefs.   Amen