Ocean

Our pastor this weekend was talking about a blind spot in the faith of many of us.

GRATEFULNESS, Are we grateful for God, and what He’s done?  Really grateful!  Or…. do we just pay it lip service?

Where is God on our priority list?

Work, Family, Friends, Football,…God?, …….or some such list?  The truth is as a Christian, I have often had my wife before God, my pleasure before God, and my finances before God.  These have all brought me misery on various levels.  For when they go wrong my world crumbles…..Oh and they do go wrong!  Of course they do.  Can our world be anchored on the flawed….yes, but it will leave us empty and emotionally unstable so very often.

God on the other hand is…….. what I unfortunately only can wish I were, but am very much not….  PERFECT!!!!

He loves us perfectly, and I love only because He loved me!

We love because he first loved us.

1 John 4:19

Oh we may think we love, but it is through God and only God that we learn perfect love!  Sacrificial love, unselfish love………

Once experienced it changes the way we love… at least at times, being imperfect creatures  failure to perfectly love will happen, but, we have the example and can pursue as perfect a love as humanly possible because of it.

It is the greatest commandment

²⁹ Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ³⁰ And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

MARK 12:29-31

From this love all else flows.  But we can only get there by placing God where He belongs, and drowning in his love, His Ocean of love!

The pastor told a story about a boy that went and stayed at a beach house for the first time in his life.  He walked with his grandfather over a sand dune which separated the house from the ocean.  He had never seen the ocean before….. and when he got to the crest of the dune, in wide mouthed, wide eyed wonder he blurted out WOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!!!!!!!  and for the next however long lapped up the joy of running in and out of the ocean!

Have we truly experienced the OCEAN of God!!!!!!

Are we grateful for that all encompassing love?  Have we allowed ourselves to be drowned in it?

Thought to ponder on this long journey of life;  What would your relationships, your every day attitude, your work, your finance struggles…. everything……… look like if you allowed the love of God  to drown you?

LET HIM BE AN OCEAN!