God's love gives us hopeLove is widely touted but poorly understood today. Love of the sort that causes marriages to last for fifty and sixty years is almost unknown. Love of the sort that causes one person to sacrifice for the sake of another is thought foolish in today's "me first" world.
But that is just the kind of love that God has for you. God's love isn't some passing fancy of the sort that songwriters write about. God's love for you is unique. God's love for you is the basis of all hope. God wants you to return his love. Because God loves me, I have hope and I am free to love Him in return.
1. God's love is divine.
It is uniquely God's kind of love. God loves us actively. He sent Jesus because He loved us. He sent Jesus to avert wrath. 1 John 4:10 (NIV) "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."
God freed himself to justify us. Romans 3:25-26 (NIV) "God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished-- {26} he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus."
God's love for you isn't speculative or theoretical. It is active and living and effective. God's love drove him to send Jesus so that God could avert his own wrath at sin and free himself to justify us. Scriptures tell us that "He became flesh, and dwelt among us."
That is the love of Jesus; "He twisted Himself to accommodate us, and gave us the kiss of eternal life." God's love is unconditional. God's love is impartial. Deuteronomy 7:7-8 (NIV) "The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. {8} But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt."
God's love flows to all alike. Matthew 5:45 "He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."
Psalm 145:9 "The LORD is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made." God loves the unlovely. We all fall short of expectations. Romans 5:8 "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Illustration of God's love: Christian philanthropist Fred Smith tells how his daughter Brenda and her husband Rick befriended an ex-convict and the woman with whom he was living. Rick gave the man a job. Brenda spent time with the woman, bought things for her, and witnessed to her about Christ. Together they convinced the couple that the right thing to do would be to get married. They even asked a minister to perform the ceremony and offered to open their home for the occasion. But a few days later, Rick found a note from the man saying that they were leaving town to get away from a hired assassin. Later, Mr. Smith asked his daughter how she felt about spending so much time, energy, and money on these people, only to have the relationship end so suddenly. Tears welled up in her eyes. "No matter where they are or how long they live," she said, "they'll always know that somebody cared." Brenda and Rick had loved unselfishly, and for them that was reward enough.
God gives you His love because of who He is, not because of who you are. God's love for you doesn't depend on you; it depends on Him! This means that there's nothing you can do to make God love you any more. There's nothing you can do to make God love you any less.
God's love is unconditional and active…
2. God's love gives hope.
Hope because of fulfilled promises. God keeps his promises in love. Frequently those who have not read or do not understand the Old Testament like to say that the God of the Old Testament is a God of anger, whereas the God of the New Testament is a God of love.
Fact is, the Old Testament speaks more of God's love. New Testament speaks more of God's judgment and the punishment that awaits those who rebel against God. The Old Testament links God's love with his promise keeping in many, many places.
Example: Psalm 106:45 says of those in exile, "for their sake he remembered his covenant and out of his great love he relented."
This verse links God's covenant promises with his great love. In other words, God's love gives us hope because we can count on God's love motivating him to keep his promises!
Hope is grounded in God's love
When you know and understand the living God true hope becomes a possibility. Genuine hope doesn't depend upon you or your circumstances or your ability to think good things into existence. Biblical hope is anchored in who God is and what he has done.
One famous pastor of years gone by said this: "From God's other known attributes we may learn much about his love. We can know, for instance, that because God is self-existent, his love had no beginning; because he is eternal, his love can have no end; because he is infinite, it has no limit; because he is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity; because he is immense, his love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea before which we kneel in joyful silence and from which the loftiest eloquence retreats confused and abashed."
Hope of a better future. God will fulfill his promises to mold and make you more like Jesus Christ, every day of your life.
Better character Romans 5:3-5 "Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; {4} perseverance, character; and character, hope. {5} And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."
Better conditions John 14:1-3 "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2 In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am."
Better Compensation Matthew 19:27-29 "Peter answered him, "We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?" 28 Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life."
Where is your hope? Is it in this world? You will eventually be disappointed. Is it in God?
3. God wants us to return his love.
Christianity is each person responding to God's love revealed in Jesus Christ. God love us so much that the Father gave the Son, the Son gave his life to cleanse sin,
The Father and the Son together give the Holy Spirit to convict and give new life to sinners. Faith is believing that God really does love you and really has done these things. All God wants is that we love him back!
Deuteronomy 10:12 "And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul."
Is that too much to ask?
God's love is divine.
God's love gives hope.
God wants us to return his love.
Because God loves me with divine love, I have hope and am free to love him in return. Know Nothing in this life satisfies fully. Nothing in this life stands forever.
Be A person who loves God, A person who hopes for a better character, a better condition and a better compensation.
Cultivate your love for God.
The world constantly reminds us of our: failures, our errors, our sins, God's love isn't that way. God's love is divine. He loves you unconditionally He has sent Jesus to free you from all these things. He gives you and me the hope and promise of a better future.
Because God loves me, I have hope. I am free to love Him in return. Is it too much to ask that you love Him in return?