Changed by Love

The truth in these lyrics has been comforting to me this week, so I thought I'd share the link. I had another week of eye-opening, increasing awareness of my sinfulness. Maybe it's the busyness and pressure of this season that's causing all the sin in me to rise to the surface, but seriously it's like I'm seeing one thing after the next.

This morning when our awesome worship leader, DJ, had us put our names in the place of "love" for those verses from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, I just cringed inwardly:

Mel is patient and kind; she does not envy or boast; Mel is not arrogant or rude; she is not irritable or resentful; she does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Mel bares all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Eeeek. I was so relieved when DJ said that she also felt that she was lying to put her name in there! How I wish those things were true of me, but I know, even just looking back at this week, that those verses do not describe me. I don't love like that a lot of the time.

Yet today, after an awesome time gathering around the Gospel with our church family, I am encouraged that this kind of love does exist, even though mine falls so short of it. Our God loves His children like this - with a love that never ends (1 Cor 13:8).

I am so glad that the Gospel frees me to admit how bad I am and acknowledge the full extent of my sinfulness. So often I am tempted to minimize my sin or excuse it, so that I can somehow feel worthy of God's acceptance. But I was reminded this week, through this song, and then today through the sermon on Luke 6:27-36, that  God loves me even with all of my crap and the besetting sins that I struggle to kill. He loves His enemies. He's not waiting till I change to love me. He loves me now. And it's actually His love that does the changing in me. My heart is beginning to rejoice again tonight in the truth that God doesn't wait till I'm a saint to love me! But while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me. Though I was His enemy, He made me His friend, through the blood of Jesus. Not because of anything I did. Not because I changed enough to earn His love... but just because of His grace and love extended to me, in Christ. Jesus is Love personified. He epitomizes the love that 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 speaks of. I am only accepted because of Jesus' perfect life, lived on my behalf, and His death on the cross, in my place.

Now sanctification - this process of dying to my sin - is me living out more and more who God has already declared me to be, in Christ. I've been adopted into His family and He's never going to send me back to the orphanage. I will always be His child, so I don't need to fear. His love never fails, never gives up, never runs out on me. He says that I am His, and then changes me so I live more and more in that reality.

As Christians, we're not people who are trying to change to earn God's acceptance. Rather, we're people who are first loved by God and then changed by Love.

And on and on and on and on it goes. It overwhelms and satisfies my soul. And I never ever have to be afraid.'Cause this one thing remains. Your love never  fails, it never gives up, it never runs out on me! 

Thank You Jesus.