Andy Elmhorst
March 6th, 2020We don't have a choice in deciding who God is.
We cannot choose to decide how terrifying God is.
We don't have a choice in deciding how he deals with evil or injustice or sin or anything on this earth. We can wonder and ask Him why, but we cannot choose to dismiss Him because we don't agree with Him.
We don't have a choice in deciding what He hates or how much he hates sin. We don't have a choice in deciding the terms by which he deals with our sin or anyone else's sin.
We don't have a choice in deciding whether God loves us. He loves us. He loves us so much that he sent his Son into the world to save us.
Knowing this does not save us. What saves us is His Grace. There is nothing we can do to deserve, nothing we can do to earn it. It is all and only Him who saves us.
From Ephesians 1:
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us
Growing as a follower of Christ is marked by making Him the Lord, the ultimate authority in our lives. Everything came from Him, everything belongs to Him. We should hold nothing back from Him. He owns it all, and He has the right to ask anything of us, to tell us to go anywhere or do anything. That is what it means to be a follower of Christ.