Called to Demonstrate God's Love

Of all the ways God could have described His love, He reached for one of the tenderest images imaginable. He compared Himself to a nursing mother bending over her child. It is worth pausing there, because that single picture reframes everything we think we know about who God is and what our world is aching for.

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.

Isaiah 49:15-16

Zion had just cried out, "The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me." And God answered that fear not with a lecture but with the most primal bond He could name. A mother might, in some rare tragedy, forget her nursing child. But God will not forget you. He has your name written on His hands.

Made for a Love We Cannot Live Without

There is something striking about that image in light of what we have learned about how children grow. Researchers who study early development describe a mother's love and nurture as a kind of template, shaping not only how a child feels but how they will one day be able to form every other relationship. Deprive a child of that love and care, and the effects can run deep and last long.

The same pattern shows up in the body. There is a bonding chemistry released through closeness, touch, and even sharing a meal, which is part of why people in love so often want to eat together, and why a shared table has always been at the heart of fellowship. Hold a child close, and they settle; the frantic rhythm quiets and steadies. Withhold touch, and something in them begins to wither. We were made, from the very first, for love we cannot live without.

So here is a question worth sitting with. If the absence of a mother's love can wound a child that deeply, could it be that the massive brokenness in our world, the violence, the corruption, the sorrow, is at root a world starved of the experience of God's love? Beneath so much of the anger and pain in human hearts runs a quiet cry: I am forgotten. I am forsaken.

Think about it. A billion dollars will not satisfy the person who feels abandoned by the one who matters most. Every pleasure the world can offer rings hollow when you feel rejected at the core. When life narrows down to its final moments, no one clutches at their degrees or their houses. What the human heart cries out for, in the end, is simply this: do not forget me. And the God of the Bible answers, I never will.

The Fundamental Nature of God

We often speak of God's holiness, His judgment, His wrath, His law. All of those are real. But none of them is the foundation. According to Scripture, the fundamental nature of God is love.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

1 John 4:8

This means God's holiness is a holiness of love. His anger is the anger of love. His law is the law of love. Any time you describe God, or any of His attributes, outside the context of love, you have not yet described the God of the Bible. He is love all the way down.

And this is agape love, the unconditional, no-strings-attached desire for the good of another. It came to us in Jesus, who gave His life not only for those already inside the church but for the whole world. God loved the whole world, and gave up His Son for it, so that in Christ the door of acceptance is thrown open to everyone. Because you simply cannot be whole without knowing you are accepted by God.

Why Grace Life Center Exists

This shapes why our church exists at all. Not to hand you a list of things to do for God so you can earn His affection. We exist for two reasons: to help you experience the supernatural love of God, and to demonstrate that love to the whole world.

Start with the first, because everything flows from it. The single most important thing any person on earth can come to know and believe is that God loves them. We love, Scripture says, because He first loved us. You cannot manufacture love for God out of duty. It is awakened only when you finally taste how deeply you are already loved.

So how do you experience God's love? The way a child experiences a mother's. A child does not lie awake wondering whether its mother will stop loving it because it made a mess. Yet so many of us imagine God recoiling from us the moment we fail. Is it not precisely when a child is at its most helpless that a mother's tenderness comes out all the more? Why would we think God is any less?

• Believe, and never doubt, that God loves you. A child does not question its mother's love; do not question your Father's.
• Expect His love. Children expect to be fed, clothed, and cared for, not because they have earned it, but simply because they are children.
• Expect Him to heal, to save, to protect, and to provide, not because your performance has been perfect, but because He is infinitely better than the most devoted mother.

This is why, at Grace Life Center, we keep pointing back to what God has already done and is doing for us in Jesus. In so many places all you hear is what you must do for God to earn His love. But He says, I will love you the way a mother loves her nursing child. Until you have learned to receive that love, you have no real power to love in return. When a person catches even a small glimpse of how deeply they are loved, nothing can hold them back from God. No sacrifice looks too costly. We love, because He first loved us.

Called to Pass It On

Which brings us to the second reason we exist: to demonstrate the love we have received, to one another and to the world. Paul said the love of Christ compels us, drives us, leaves us no choice but to live for the One who died for us.

For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all.

2 Corinthians 5:14

It turns out love is not only a feeling that produces actions; actions of love also produce the feeling. Nearness, warmth, kindness, and genuine care, offered consistently, soften even the hardest heart, our own included. When your heart is filled with the love of God, the most natural thing in the world is to let it spill over onto the people around you.

So say it. Tell someone plainly, "I love you." It is a sad thing that our culture has narrowed that word almost entirely to romance, because there is nothing wrong with sending a friend a note that says, "You were on my heart this morning. Have a wonderful day, and remember that Jesus loves you, and so do I." To the pure, all things are pure. Let us be free to love one another openly, because God has so freely loved us.

Scripture warns the church at Ephesus that it had done many good things but had left its first love behind, and it calls them to return to it. That is a warning worth heeding. It is possible to be busy and correct and still grow cold. So let us keep coming back to the love that started it all.

In the end, I will not boast in my gifts or my knowledge or my strength. I will boast only in Jesus Christ, in His death and resurrection, in the astonishing truth that His wounds have paid my ransom and His dying breath has brought me life. That is the love that made a treasure out of someone like me. And our whole mission here is simply this: to let that love fill our lives, fill this church, and fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. If it is not love, we are not interested.