About The Words
What’s most important in life?
There are a lot of ways to interpret and answer that question – but also different ways to ask it.
Back when Jesus walked the earth, someone asked it this way:
“Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus’ reply is stunning.
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40)
According to Jesus, the greatest thing, what matters most when all is said and done, is our love for God and our love for others.
First and Second Blog is a hub for my writing, all of which aims to seek, find, and share perspective on what it means to live according to what Jesus says is best.
About Me
What I hope you know about me (and yourself!) is this:
Title: Loved by God.
Task: To love God and out of the love He gives, love others.
Traits: By the grace of God, we are who we are. We are made and being made.
As for those pesky pertinents expected in bios…
- I love reading, writing and most any form of being immersed in a story
- The things I bake taste good but usually look awful
- I take my coffee as hot cocoa
- I’m terrible at small talk, forgive me!
What I really love is getting to know and build up those whom God so loved He sent His only Son for them. That’s you. So please stay awhile, read a bit, check out my books, comment, share, and connect with me.
Let me know what I can be praying over with you. You can email me here.
About God
I saved the best for last!
God introduced Himself as “I AM.”
God is….
- Timeless– He’s been around forever and will be forever
- Present– He’s with us right now
- Personal- He wants to speak to you today
- Reliable– He is who He is, He isn’t changing and He doesn’t need to
- Right- He’s the One true God and everything is measured by Him and His standards
- Mighty– He holds the world, each of us, and all that exists in His hands
- Loving– He chooses to make Himself known and to care for us
- Exciting– He is. He is! And because He is, we can be!
While knowing God inspires awe and wonder, it’s also challenging.
When we begin to grasp that God is who He says He is, we have a few matters to settle. We have to come to terms with the fact that:
- We aren’t timeless
- We aren’t all that matters
- We aren’t able to set the rules of the world or the course of our lives
- We aren’t limitless in our understanding, power, and capacities
- We aren’t perfectly loving, because we’re corrupt and selfish by nature
- We aren’t definitive- we’re changing, wandering, shifting things
- We aren’t independent of God whether we acknowledge Him or not
That we naturally want to deny God and choose to live our way, for our limited selves, according to our death-bound desire is evidence that we are sinners.
We are sinners in need of a reality check. And more than that, in need of a Savior.
Remember: He is loving and exciting.
God designed us for relationship, first and foremost with Him. Going to heaven is all about being with God forever. And that’s exciting- we get to be with the perfect God, in a perfect relationship, in a perfect reality.
Our opportunity to spend forever with God is also loving on His part. We don’t deserve anything except for the natural consequence of sin: death. We don’t deserve relationship with the perfect, wonderful, amazing, unlimited, always-existent God. But because He is loving, He has in fact:
“So loved the world (that’s you and me) that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” –John 3:16
Jesus, God’s son, humbled Himself, took on the form of a man even while being fully God, lived with all temptation, suffered, even to the point of death on a cross, so that He could defeat death. He rose again victoriously to restore us to right relationship with God. When we change our minds and hearts in regards to disbelieving and denying God in order to embrace Jesus, our Savior, and accept the salvation He freely offers us by grace, we have:
“Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life (with the great I AM!) and will not be judged but have crossed over from death to life.” –John 5:24
Also exciting:
When Jesus rose up into heaven, He sent us the Holy Spirit. Not only do we get new life in eternity with God Himself, but we get God living inside of us, leading us, prompting us, teaching us, helping us, fighting sin in us, and shaping us.
We get to be with God today and everyday.
When we become God’s own, saved by Christ and blessed with the Holy Spirit, we are both made new and being made new. By I AM.
Who are you? Whose are you?
If you believe God is who He says is and want to be with Him forever, saved from sin and from death, settle the matter today.
Yield to the One who IS, to His perfect love, freely given, turning from the reality of condemnation to the everlasting reality of life as it was intended. Talk to God, thanking Him for Christ’s sacrifice and asking Him for His mercy.
I would love to hear about your new relationship with the Lord or, if you’ve already settled the matter and trusted in Christ for salvation, your life as one of His own. Contact me here.
