recentchristian

On December 3rd, in Morning by Morning, by Charles H. Spurgeon, I read this:

“Christ Jesus has no argument with his spouse. She often wanders from him and grieves him, but he does not allow her faults to affect his love. He sometimes scolds, but it is always in the most tender manner and with the kindest intentions.”

I finished this daily reading with tears streaming down my cheeks – it hit me hard.

First off, “spouse” is the community of all true believers for all time. Christianity can be tricky … yes, the church is also the physical building, but, the way Spurgeon uses “spouse” here, he’s referring to the community of true believers.

It hit me hard that with God seeing my heart and my inner thoughts, He would still love me. I sinned a lot in the past and, by God’s grace, that sinning has gone down significantly. They are different sins now – more of the heart sins and smaller, “respectable” sins. But, they are still sins – the same sins that Jesus went to the cross for.

Even after all of my past sins and all of the sins I still commit and the sins I know I’ll be committing in the future (as much as I try to not commit them, they are still there, weighing me down) … God still loves me. It’s astonishing that He would give his Son for sinners. I’ve never known such love – it’s a love so pure beyond belief – incomprehensible by a mere human that God would give his only Son, and the Son would go to the cross willingly. It’s one love that I can count on morning, noon, and night. Day after day. Year after year. It’s utterly and entirely amazing when I think about it – it’s a reason to rejoice. I’ll never cease to wonder at the sweeping expanse of God’s love and forgiveness of sins for those who choose to repent and follow Jesus. When I think of the love that God has and compare it with any relationship I’ve had (whether it be friendships or romantic relationships), human love pales in comparison to the love God has – it can’t even be measured on the same scale.

I’ve also had my fair share of scolding – the trials that God has given me are many (but they are a lot less than a lot trials that others suffer). For me, at this phase in my life, it’s mostly physical pain (arthritis; pain in my lower legs; degenerative disc disease in my neck; frequent headaches …). I’ve never faulted God for any of it … everything that God throws at me seems to bring me closer to Him and to a greater reliance on Him and for that I’m thankful and that’s a reason for praise. Yes, there are difficult days where the only thing I can do is to throw my feet over the back of the couch and listen to an audio book but I’m thankful that I can always turn to God and know he’s listening.

Come, broken hearted, come to Jesus and know the love that you can only experience through knowing God.

Here’s a link to the book Knowing God by J.I. Packer on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3ZHnQFN