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Rediscovering God’s Love

I can remember many years ago taking a seminar on working with youth. The speaker shared about his experience working with teenagers and made some profound observations. He described a group of youth using three categories: honest pagans – those searching for truth; committed Christians – those committed to learning more about their faith; and church kids – those who looked okay and had all the right answers but were in reality far from God. I think the truth of his observations weren’t limited to just the youth…

I’ve heard in the Christian life, you are either going forward or backward. But I know people who have kind of been on a spiritual plateau. Their lives seem to be put in neutral. They aren’t in rebellion against God nor are they living in open or secret sin. There just doesn’t seem to be any progress. They haven’t led anyone to Christ in years and aren’t excited about anything related to the kingdom of God. They seem to have levelled out, and their lives are set on some sort of spiritual auto-pilot.

During the time of the prophet Malachi, God’s people were on a bit of a plateau of lukewarm mediocrity. The fifty thousand who returned to Jerusalem from their captivity in Babylon had been settled in Judah for over seventy years, but the promised Messiah Haggai and Zechariah had not yet come. All the passion, the genuine and intimate relationship they used to have with God had seemed to be drained away – like the plug in a sink. Even the worship of God had become an empty chore.

In response to this, Malachi speaks, calling this community of believers to return to a living and vital relationship with God. It is interesting to note that in the fifty-five verses of this book, God speaks from a first person perspective to the people in forty-seven of them. The book of Malachi is a call to God’s people to be faithful in a time when heaven seemed to be silent. It is interesting to note that the second verse of the book, God says, “I have loved you.”

In times where we “feel” alone, we need to be reminded of this truth. In fact, it is love that binds God to His own. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”And it is love that God sees from His own. John 13:35 says, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” He wants us to walk in the devotion and commitment of your first love. 1 John 4:19, “We love because he first loved us.”

I know many of us go through our day to day in a bit of a fog. It is hard to see the good things in life through the mess we experience on a daily basis. The challenge is to cut through the fog of apathy and rediscover the love that God has for us.

My question and challenge is how hard are we looking? God’s love is like the lighthouse shining for any passing ships to see. But if we focus all our attention on ourselves and problems, we might miss out all that God has to offer us.

May we discover or rediscover God’s wonderful love for us and with that, experience the blessings of joy, hope, peace and most importantly, His presence as we journey together.

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