The Bible
– The
Message
Romans
11:33-36
33–36 Have you ever come on anything quite
like this extravagant generosity of God, this deep, deep wisdom? It’s way over
our heads. We’ll never figure it out.
Is there anyone around who can
explain God?
Anyone smart enough to tell him
what to do?
Anyone who has done him such a
huge favor that God has to ask his advice?
Everything comes from him;
Everything happens through him;
Everything ends up in him.
Always glory! Always praise!
Yes. Yes. Yes!
Thoughts:
No doubt the Romans were having trouble understand this deep,
amazing love of Jesus that Paul spoke about. Paul struggled to find words to
explain this love, but he kind of recapped it by saying that God’s love is
undeserved, because there is nothing that we have done that could ever qualify
as a contribution towards God loving us in the amazing way that He does. This
helped me to understand how non-Christians must feel and why we receive the
blank looks when we try to share with them the unsearchable, undeserved yet
unshakable and everlasting love of our Father. I am convinced that no matter
what we tell others about the Bible and all that Jesus said about love, or what
Paul or Luke or John said, the thing that will impact them most, is when we
tell them about how God’s love has impacted us. Too many of us are way too nervous
about witnessing, because we are afraid that we may not be able to answer a
Bible question correctly, or recite verses needed to show a lost one their need
for the Savior. Friends, when I tell folk about the joys of marriage, and they
see and understand how much I love my wife, then they believe what I said about
marriage. So it is with witnessing. Although we might use a Bible story or
character as an illustration when we share with someone about the love of God,
it’s not until we share the impact God had in our lives that they truly start
to listen and believe. Ever notice how you totally tune out a person when they
tell us about a coworker who may be close to them, but we may not know the person
or anything about them? However when they finally get to tell us about
themselves, our attention is quickly focused on them? This is the best method
of witnessing, I feel. Share what God has done for you, and that the same love
of which you told, is also available to them. Remember, God does the saving,
not us. Our responsibility is to share what God has done for us, so that others
may know that the same ‘Gift’ is available to them.
Prayer:
Dear Jesus, what amazing love You have shown to me! The
Love of God is truly amazing! Nothing, absolutely nothing have I
done to deserve the love that You showed when You allowed wicked sinful people
to beat You and hang You in disgrace on a cross just so that I might have a way
to one day enter heaven’s gates and sit with You at God’s right hand. Thank You
for claiming me as Your own. Please help me to always allow Your love to radiate
through me in such a way that a non-Christian family member, friend or
co-worker would have no doubt that the King of Glory resides within and that this
love is something they desperately need. Lord, we (Christians) are absolutely
worthless without You, and we have no need of being looked on as anything other
than the image of our Father. Please have Your will and way in my life even
today, and develop a peace in me over those things that would ordinarily give me
deep concern. Please touch the heart of my friends that may read this
devotional. May they find peace in You and experience that ‘love’ of which I
have shared. Thine be the glory Lord! I ask this in Your holy
and precious and loving name, AMEN!
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