I listened to some wonderful CDs yesterday…Harry Layden preaching about Faith. He made a point that I think is quite profound.
Here is how I remember it…with my little embellishments.
2 Corinthians 5: 14- 15 says:
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
Apart from Christ’s love, I am capable of doing things in my flesh of which I would be shocked. (Overeating again…and again…and again…is just one thing of many…)
If Christ’s love compels me to be different, to live for the Lord, it seems that I really have to connect with this love. So often, I don’t LET God love me. I am so busy beating myself up…So it stands to reason, if I am out of touch with His love, if I minimize it, if I don’t believe it in the moment (maybe I am so depressed or so down on myself for choices I made to sin), then, I am disconnected from that power that is intended to compel me to live for Him!
Harry Layden shared about a moment of weakness where he called to God, “God, I need you to come and love me right now…I need to know that love experientially…come and love me right now or I know that I am capable of doing things in my flesh that I don’t want to do.”
The idea being that when I sense His love afresh by inviting Him to, right now in this moment, help me to sense it afresh, I will experience it and be compelled in the now to live for Him…It is HIS love that compels me…so I need a fresh taste of that…
I don’t mean intellectually…I think many of us *know* with our heads that God loves us…but in the moment when we have sinned (again) and we feel we are presuming upon his grace again and again…do we really believe He loves us even then? Or how about WHILE we are sinning? Do we believe He loves us then?
Romans 5:8 says: But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Even when we were yet sinning God loved…we don’t grasp that…or so it seems to me. So…my take on it is…if we really feel like something is lacking in our having that OOOMPH to live for the Lord, maybe just maybe it is that we don’t sense that love and can ask God…”Lord, love me right now so I can be compelled to choose to live for you in this moment.”
