IT ISN'T JUST THE PASSION OF CHRIST

I had a pastor friend tell me that if he wants to know what God is trying to help him see, he reflects on the words he is saying to those who come to him for help. I realize that could get you off track if you always followed that advice. I certainly know that, in my case, the words I speak aren't always spirit-led! Yet, my pastor friend had a point. 

I was talking with a young man some time ago and felt prompted to ask him, "How much do you think about God as your Father? Is that important to you?" He probably said something like, "Oh yeah. I know I'm born again." I kept drilling. "Yes. But how big of a deal is it that the Father is thinking about you right now?" I could tell he just didn't think about God like that. 

And a few hours later, I heard the same question in my own heart: "Shawn, how big of a deal is it that I'm thinking about you right now?" 

I find myself slowly drifting from this reality. Like an elementary kid that graduates from reciting the ABCs. "I don't need that anymore. It's time for higher learning." But is there anything higher or more important than this? The Father of Jesus Christ loves you and is thinking about you right now. This should stop us in our tracks. This should melt us and cause us to drop to our knees. But we get bored with it. Like the Gateway Arch in my city, St. Louis, I can drive by it and stop seeing what a massive structure it is. Or like that toddler in your house that exasperates you, although when he was born, you held him, examined the tiny fingers, and cried. We drive by the everlasting love of God and don't even see it anymore because "there are more important things to learn." 

But listen to a couple of guys who were captured by God's love: 

David, the warrior king, the man after God's own heart, penned these song lyrics: 

"How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand." (Psalm 139:17,18 ESV)

And in the words of John, the beloved friend of Jesus:

 

"See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" (1 John 3:1, NIV)

How much do you make of that? Is it boring to you? Think again. 

As we enter Passion Week, it's fitting that we reflect on the cross of Christ, Jesus' self-sacrificial love displayed through the torture of Roman crucifixion. But Jesus didn't do it by Himself. It wasn't like Jesus had to convince the Father that you and I were worth it. God the Father loved you. He wanted to be with you. He was thinking of you when He ordered the events leading to the birth of His Son in a stable. He thought of you when He handed His Son over to the torturers. How much is that on our minds during Passion Week? To paraphrase John the Beloved, "Listen up! Look again at the kind of love this is! The kind that causes the eternally self-existent, all-powerful One, who needs nothing, to go to extreme measures so that you might be called his beloved boy, his precious girl."  

In Knowing God, the late J.I. Packer writes, 

"If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all." 

Don't make the mistake this week of thinking that Jesus loves you, but the Father puts up with you. That the angels got the attention of that cranky God of the Old Testament and said, "You really need to do something to improve your image among human beings, to spice up your reputation. Jesus, can you talk to your Father?" And then God the Father agreed and came up with the idea of sending Jesus. No. It's not just the passion of Jesus Christ. It's the passion of God, the Father that motivated Him to give His only Son because He so loved you. 

How much will you make of that today?