God’s Love – indycrowe

Known & Loved by Glenna Marshall

I don’t rate books based on stars or numbers. I tend to classify them mentally more in terms of books: “to avoid,” “not worth your time,” “good for a specific person or season,” or “everyone should prioritize reading this.” It’s not as memorable or clean as the stars approach, but it’s how I think about books (especially as a pastor who views recommended resources as part of shepherding).

Glenna Marshall’s newest book, Known & Loved: Experiencing the Affection of God in Psalm 139, would be in the “everyone should prioritize reading it” class. The structure (Psalm 139) and style (deeply personal and deeply biblical) root the reader in Scripture with the aim of seeing just how much God’s knowledge of us and love for us can change our everyday life.

Beholding the Beauty of Being Chosen by God

A couple years ago, my wife and I visited the Grand Canyon. It’s a sight to behold, whether at sunrise when the dawn slowly lights up the cold canyon, during the day as its scope can be appreciated, or at night when countless stars fill the sky.

We enjoy hiking, and even though it had recently snowed, we wanted to descend into the canyon. (It’s estimated that only five percent of the more than six million annual visitors go below the rim.) The path along the canyon’s rim is a peaceful place to enjoy the view, but you get to behold the sheer size and beauty of the canyon in a whole different way when you walk down into it. Your eyes are caught by the layers of rock, each offering its own shade and color. You feel your smallness and the canyon’s enormity beneath the rim’s surface. After a couple miles, especially when slowed by trekking through snow and ice, you look up thinking you’ll be further into the canyon only to realize it’s bigger and deeper than you imagined. But whether it’s looking down from above or scanning the canyon from inside, the more you see the layers within the canyon the more in awe you will be of the Grand Canyon as a whole (and its Maker).

The Father’s Love in Adoption

This post continues a series on The Love of the Father. Below are the prior posts.
Reasons We Struggle to Experience God’s Love
Seven Features of God’s Fatherly Love
God’s Love in Revealing Himself
The Father’s Love in Sending His Son

I’m thankful for the forgiveness of sin, the removal of condemnation and punishment, and the promise of eternal life in a resurrected body. I’m thankful I don’t have to carry guilt and shame because Christ took it away. But of all the blessings we have in Christ, there is none greater than being adopted by God so that we become his beloved sons and daughters. J. I. Packer states that adoption is “the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification…. Adoption is higher, because of the richer relationship with God that it involves.”[1]

The Father’s Love in Sending His Son

There are many proofs of God’s love scattered throughout the pages of Scripture. We notice further testimony of God’s loving kindness in his mercy and gifts both in creation around us and in our lives every single day. But there is no greater demonstration of God’s love than in the Father sending his only Son to save us. If the evidences of God’s love were a mountain, with new discoveries and greater examples of his love unfolding as we climb higher and higher in the knowledge of God, at the very top would still be the costliest, most needed, and most valuable of all gifts ever given: Jesus. The gift of Jesus includes not just that he was sent (incarnation) but that he was sent with the mission of a dying on the cross in our place, taking the punishment we deserved.

God’s Love in Revealing Himself

This post continues a series on The Love of the Father. Below are the first two posts.
Reasons We Struggle to Experience God’s Love
Seven Features of God’s Fatherly Love

One of my favorite things to do with my four-year-old daughter is enjoy a dessert together—or get a treat, as she calls it. Whether it’s ice-cream, a good cookie, or a donut, we bond as we talk, laugh, and savor the sweets. She’s recently been asking me to tell her stories about myself. It’s partly because she just likes to hear stories, and it’s partly because she gets to know me by the things I share. Whether it’s through these stories, in everyday conversation, or over the course of time as she sees what I’m like she desires to know me. All children desire this.

Seven Features of God’s Fatherly Love

Before discussing what God’s love looks like—and I’m looking specifically at how God loves us with as our father—I want to briefly consider a few reasons why “love” might lack clarity or even be unhelpful today.

Reasons We Struggle to Experience God’s Love

It can be difficult to grasp God’s love for us. For many, the love of Jesus comes through loud and clear, but God the Father often seems distant or looming. God’s attributes—including love—aren’t like human traits that strengthen or weaken nor are they like moods that come and go. God is all of his attributes perfectly, all the time. And yet, we still struggle to believe it can be true, that this great God can love us messy and stumbling sinners. Sometimes we don’t feel his love on a day-to-day basis like we desire, so walls of doubt begin to shut him out. Other times we unwittingly read the Word not through the lens of his love and grace to us in Christ, but through tinted lens of condemnation and guilt.

God’s Steadfast Love Endures Forever: November Gratitude Reading Plan (Day 14)

(This devotional is day fourteen of a 30-Day Thanksgiving Challenge. Each day includes a daily reading that will be accompanied by a post on this blog.)

Read Psalm 136

The Psalmist opens (1-3) and closes (26) this song with the call to give thanks. In between, he moves from God’s glorious attributes and powerful acts seen in Creation (4-9), Redemption (10-22), and ongoing Provision (23-25). There is more than enough reason to thank God in each realm. Anchoring every verse is the refrain: “for his steadfast love endures forever.” We thank God for His many gifts, and none are greater than His steadfast love.

The Lion King and God’s Protecting Love

Early in Disney’s The Lion King, Mufasa perches high on Pride Rock, overlooking his African territory. Next to him sits his beloved son, Simba.

Mufasa tells Simba, “Everything the light touches is our kingdom.”

Continue reading The Lion King and God’s Protecting Love

See It!

One word in the Bible can be a game changer. When John says “SEE what kind of the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God, and so we are” (1 John 3:1), it’s like he brings us to a halt with hands waving and fingers pointing to a jaw-dropping sight. You’ve got to see this! Look! Come and see something you won’t believe! While we are quick to speak of God-especially his love-with generalizations and glance over Scripture in our readings, John invites us to slow down, take a look at something, and be amazed.

Continue reading See It!