Red Letters – So Loved – April 9

RED LETTERS
April 9, 2021

So Loved

John 3:16-21, ‘”This is how much God loved the world: He gave His Son, His one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in Him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending His Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in Him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust Him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to Him. This is the crisis we are in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they weren’t really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it truly is.”’ (MSG)

The gift of life is an unexplainable mystery. There is not one minute detail that escapes God’s attention or sneaks by His notice. He knows the number of hairs on your head and every breath I inhale and exhale and down to the very second of each of our lives. We cannot extend our lives by making a plea and even a deal with the devil will not shorten our days, although how we live our lives, I think can impact the quality of our lives. Your Father sees you in the dark places, the hidden place, and has woven all your intricacies together into the Masterpiece that is you in the obscurity of your mother’s womb. You are because He designed you just as you are. You are knit into you and there has never been nor will there ever be another you.

Before your parents ever created you (some, born of love; some, born of lust—but all born of God’s great plan), God saw you, fashioned you, dreamt you into existence. He conceived the notion of you in His heart, and after you gestated as He deigned, the concept of you was birthed into a reality. There is not one detail of you or me that is a surprise to Almighty God, nor will there ever be.

So being born again to us is as foreign as it was to Nicodemus, a wise scholar of his time. We aren’t any time soon crawling back up the birth canal and climbing back inside the safe circumference of the uterine wall and swimming in the life-giving rivers of amniotic fluid. First of all, we wouldn’t fit, right?! But truly your second birth is just as important, and maybe even more so than the first time you entered this world. You are so loved that He gave His best for you, His only Son, Jesus, so that with your second birth, any sin which is certain of humanity and this life, could be untangled and unraveled from the outcome of your story.

Just tell Nicodemus you don’t have to be physically birthed again to be spiritually alive; that would be like threading hay through a needle lost in a haystack. For both births, you come from darkness into light; but for the one, it is temporary and can seem hopeless and threatened by death. For the second, born again, it is for all eternity, and the battle has been won and death overcome…praise be to Jesus Christ, risen Son of God.

I’ve been reading RED LETTERS all my life, but never with my heart.
During the month of April, let’s JOURNEY where JESUS journeyed,
and listen with our hearts to all He came to proclaim.