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Normally I would have waited until Father’s day to release this article but it was on my mind and so I decided to share my thoughts about it.
Anyway I believe that most normal people have a desire to please and identify with their father or a fatherly figure. However when this relationship is hindered from developing through some sort of dysfunction, such as with an absentee father through death, divorce, abandonment, neglect or abuse, etc. then this may have a profound effect on how they view Father God. This can promote a tendency to project such emotionally strong feelings of negativity as leading to a lack of trust with skepticism and hostility towards the ultimate authority and Father, namely God. Sometimes you experience this when you meet a person who reminds you of someone else who has mistreated you as influencing the way you think and behave around them as also including roles and gender.
Of course I realize that this scenario may not always describe all people who are able to positively work through this dilemma or on the other hand esteem their atheist/agnostic fathers as a role model in taking on their mantle of unbelief.
Yet even if a person is able to disassociate between Heaven and Earth there is another problem that emerges with the question of “How could God allow me to be victimized by life?” Respectfully, this predicament is the crux of the human condition as involving depraved, free will creatures who are ultimately responsible for their actions which I have written more about in another article dealing with pain, suffering, and evil.

Pain, Suffering and Evil

Another argument against the concept of an Almighty Father or God is by simply regarding it as “wish fulfillment” in strictly meeting their emotional needs and yet this is a moot point as this can equally apply to someone who also avoids God for psychological reasons e.g., immorality.

God is a crutch

Then there is the situation on how to reconcile the concept of Hell with a good Father who is both loving and just and all the questions that go with this matter which also becomes a non issue for those who are in a relationship with God as fulfilling the Creator’s will for their lives as His desire is that none should perish, 2 Peter 3:9, Mt. 25:41.

Is Hell Real?

What the Hell

Also whether consciously or subconsciously we all seem to have a tendency to want to make this intimate connection with our fathers even if it means substituting this heavenly/earthly model of a fatherly image to include counterfeits e.g., false religion and cults.

How to have a relationship with God

Furthermore in trying to get our fathers acceptance or approval we may also look for other avenues in which to please them such as our accomplishments or even by blaming ourselves for their failures so as to somehow win their favor. Yet whatever the situation might be, our earthly fathers, even at their very best is nothing compared to the Heavenly Father who loves you for the person He created you to be, Mt 7:7-11, Psalms 139:13-16.
Lastly if you have never received God’s love as your Heavenly Father I would ask you to reconsider your motives for rejecting Him. Happy Father’s Day my friend. #Godisgood

Romans 8:14-17 

14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are children of God. 15 For you didn’t receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God; 17 and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.

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My post is not about the historicity of the holiday but more about the modern way in which it is celebrated as usually involving family gatherings, good food, ball games and a turkey nap. This scene is typical and customary among contemporary American households and in my opinion doesn’t really exemplify a spirit of thankfulness as much as it does an excuse to get together with those we love over food.
Sometimes this kind of behavior is no different than a church service as seeing an opportunity for socializing as trying to stay awake during the worship festivities while dreaming about the potluck dinner afterwards.
Anyway I know I’m talking turkey here but my intention is to remind all of us to reflect upon the goodness of God, with gratitude, as in Him we live and move and have our being as giving us everything we need for life and godliness by which we should continually praise Him as the Bestower of great blessings upon our life. Are you truly thankful? Romans 1:21, 2 Peter 1:3, 1 Chronicles 16:34, Acts 17:28, James 1:17.

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Some may think of Jesus as a door to door salesman or a cold call telemarketer. So that when He phones or approaches your door you pretend not to be available or at home by not answering the call or knock, others may become disgusted as slamming the door in His face or hanging up the phone, or if caught off guard unexpectedly may just dismiss Him all together by simply saying I’m not interested.
Now I am know what you might be thinking, this is just like those annoying religious people who you try to avoid when they show up at your door step peddling their religious wares. But I’m not talking about joining some kind of man made religion, but rather, securing a loving relationship, not someone trying to pressure you like a greedy salesman who is only interested in stealing the deal with some sales pitch as promoting a heavenly gimmick while avoiding the pit fall of Hell just to get your money.
Rather it is a complete role reversal from a “what’s in it for Him” to a “what’s in it for me”, as receiving rather than giving, Mt. 20:28.
We have been conditioned to believe that such behavior should be treated with great skepticism as sounding to good to be true and yet when it originates from the perfect love of God then we should take the offer more seriously, John 3:16.
This reminds me of the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4 who sees Jesus as an opportunist wanting a drink of water not realizing that this was going to be the offer of an eternal lifetime as receiving His “living water” of which she would not thirst again. Thus the reality of this whole visit became disproportionately advantageous to what seemed to be a momentary inconvenience.
Anyway when Jesus shows up, and He will, I would kindly ask that you would at least hear Him out before taking your business elsewhere.

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Being this time of the year I thought I would write about Halloween, or as my wife calls it Helloween. Anyway the purpose of this blog is not to debate the nature of this holiday but to discuss how some people treat Christ as a “Trick or Treater” who comes knocking at our door thinking of Him like some kind of folklore spirit that needs the sweet appeasement of our personal peace offerings so as not to be tricked to Hell.
So when greeted from behind closed doors they dress the part in their relationship to God as stating, I am a good person, I do good deeds, or I am trying to do better. They may even mention their yearly attendance of services around certain sacred events, performing the mantra’s of confession and creeds with rituals performed and monies given. Their seasonal devotion may include decorative statuaries, symbols, and wall hangings.
Yet these measly kind of sacrificial offerings are trivially characteristic of cultus religious activities as adding to the bag of different goodies in hoping to find another year of peace and prosperity,  Ephesians 2:8-9, Hebrews 10.
Yet what God desires is to Cross over the threshold of our homes rather than fearfully being kept at arm’s length as a costumed stranger, Revelation 3:20.
Therefore God is holding out to us with the intention of receiving a personal relationship rather than  securing the benefits of a one night fest.

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My wife recently went to an optometrist due to a flash of light that is intermittently occurring in one of her eyes. Before conducting a more thorough examination to find the source of this problem he first gave her an eye exam in which the optometrist discovered that her eyes were worse off than the “over the counter” reading glasses she was using. To determine her visual acuity he checked her vision with the phoropter by asking her questions as he changed the lens, such as, how does that look or appear, is that clearer, is that better, so on and so forth.
Apart from this subjective questioning he also would have used a more objective method by utilizing a retinoscope or autorefractor to project light into her pupil as to measure and study the light reflex. This is pretty much a standard procedure to determine the refractive error of the eyes with the intent of correcting her vision to a more normal condition.
As a starting point, another basic and quick method to see how well our eyes are functioning is by using the Snellen Eye Chart. By reading lines of letters the standard or optimal range for our eyesight is determined to be somewhere around 20/20 whereas most humans are unable to see any better than 20/10 and anything worse than 20/40 means that a corrective lens is needed just to drive a vehicle.
What really got my attention to this whole process was a dialogue that took place between the optometrist and my wife who was having difficulty in understanding his point of reference as English is not my wife’s first language or culture. This disparity over word usage challenged the patience of the optometrist in trying to explain the matter that at one point he asked me if I could make her understand what he meant.
One comical exchange that took place was when the optometrist was trying to convince my wife that her vision needed correction in order to see better and my wife in turn told him my vision is just fine, so better than what? The optometrist said that her vision was not normal according to his examination which she had agreed to as looking through the various lenses as contrasting her normal vision to an enhancement made available through his instruments. There were other side conversations that took place as well which contested his judgments but basically the outcome of his trained and experienced observation was that she was losing her eyesight regardless of denial or unawareness and her first clue should have been the purchase of her reading glasses.
This is somewhat like the human condition in that just like our eyes, which typically function better when they are youthful, so does our moral aptitude which is generally more insightful as seeing our true condition which isn’t blurred or distorted as damaged by living life. I am told that the eye has the capacity to adapt to trying to correct our visual handicaps much like we try to do when we don’t quite measure up to the standard of God’s law which is plainly written upon our hearts so as to correctly see the chart of right and wrong, good and evil, as either justifying or condemning our behavior,Romans 1: 18-32, 2:14-16.
What happens as adults we challenge the Eye Maker through sophisticated adaptations or arguments as denying we have any seeing problems to begin with by avoiding the eye doctor all together, redefining our own way of looking at the chart through the subjectivity of relativism as seeing an E as possibly an M, W or an F, by comparing our sight with others as average or a little better or a little worse, or by outright not wearing our glasses at all for whatever reason or excuse, etc., etc.
However the conscious is God’s visual cue to the inner eye to view the symptoms of guilt and shame in our lives. God’s light manifestly reveals this in a language that we all can see and understand so that we are without excuse. The good news is that by examining His revelatory word we can more perfectly recognize that He has given us eyes to see the hope of Truth as in Christ apart from the condemnation for those who refuse to see it God’s way.

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*Aspects of this blog post are paraphrased

We recently took a vacation in Missouri with my daughter/son-in-law and my parents. The part of Missouri that we visited was in the Ozark Mountains at Roaring River State Park.
mostateparks.com/park/roaring-river-state-park
My family stayed in a log cabin and we trout fished, barbecued, made S’mores over a campfire, and just basically had some good family time.
The highlight of the trip was the trout fishing which started in the morning and went all day; finishing in the evening with a siren which meant you needed to quit fishing and make it to the cleaning station to take care of your fish.
We had to purchase a fishing license and a daily permit which only allowed us to keep four trout a day which were primarily Rainbow Trout.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_trout
Anyway the water was crystal clear and you could often see the fish that you were catching before you even got them to the bank. Some used real bait while others used an artificial bait such as a “Power Bait” which simulated salmon eggs with various colors/scents or artificial lures such as dry flies and spinners, etc.
When utilizing man-made materials the concept was to trick the fish into thinking they were getting something real, as naturally occurring, which corresponded with the spawning season as many of the trout we cleaned had egg sacks or perhaps something that mimicked the insects in the area. Furthermore, the secret was to use a very light test fishing line with a 907 gram fluorocarbon leader along with a very small hook (No.8-12), for concealment, which is undetectable to the fish as they have a very keen sense of sight.
One way to fish was to place a lead weight, such as a split-shot, about .3 to .6 meters above the bait and throw the rig upstream allowing it to naturally drift down with the current. The eggs and dry flies are designed to float so as to give it a very attractive and appealing approach to the fish which are competing for food in the river.
We happened to be fishing downstream of a hatchery so there was plenty of fish you just had to make the right presentation to catch them.
Of course, I like to use analogies when living life as to correlate activities to that of a spiritual reality or truth. In this instance, I see that our culture often presents us with a worldview(s) which we often find alluring for various reasons. What usually gets our attention is something which we as humans often find attractive; of which we innately hunger for in respect to sustenance, beyond that of local cuisine, as something that is properly basic to the human psyche as to give ultimate purpose and meaning to life as to discover “Who am I” and “Why am I here” as attaining such universal values as love, joy, and peace.
I think that many times we find ourselves taking the bait (a.k.a. hook, line, and sinker) when we find something that at first glance may seem to satisfy these primal instincts as becoming hooked, not realizing that such superficiality can result in being reeled in as caught off-guard only to be exploited by the Catcher who steals, kills, and destroys, John 10:10.
The bible portrays such a character as Satan who is the personification of evil as an adversary and deceiver of humanity who presents an array of various tackle in the form of false religion and philosophy as to satiate the cravings of our sinful soul to capture us in deceit as enticing us, without revealing to us its artificiality, in presenting it as authentically true or as half-truths e.g., Adam and Eve in Eden and Jesus in the Wilderness.
Antithetically Jesus enlisted some fisherman whom he called ‘Fishers of Men’ who had kind of a catch and release method as relocating the fish, unharmed, from such dangerous waters to inhabit streams of living water, John 7:37-39 and John 10:10.
The final question isn’t whether or not we will be caught but rather who or what has caught us. I have written more articles about this very subject at
jesusandjews.com/wordpress/category/seekers/

 
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Death is a reality we all have to face sooner or latter. Most of us never really know when that fatal moment is going to be and therefore we should be prepared to face the possibility of life beyond the temporal physicality of this life.
I have a couple of reputable friends that have had near death experiences (NDE’s) and have spoken to me of a heavenly experience.
Anyway even though I can’t confirm every story or testimony I would still encourage you to be open to the possibility of the afterlife.

www.godtube.com/watch/?v=KYD7DPNX

www.godtube.com/watch/?v=F1JJCMNU

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When first considering this notion of “who am I” and “what is my purpose in life”, I believe there is an original answer to this question that is staged within the human psyche with a general innate sense or intuition that plainly pleads to our primal conscience concerning the true nature of our being or existence. This epistemology naturally emerges and then through the sophistication of sophistry is conveniently and selfishly altered by posing various deceptive theories which can be religious in nature as stating that all of reality as we know it is just an illusionary experience while on the other end of spectrum the scientific community strives to merely offer a naturalistic explanation as a substitution as doubting a persons immaterial being or soul. So instead of following their first instincts towards a divine omnipotent origin many times those who are of a different persuasion of self-preservation would rather erect their own idol to worship as bowing down in devotion to the false god of a materialistic ontology. However a question that science can not effectively answer nor offer a sound solution to is to why does anything exist at all since the universe has no will or power to act and why are we as humans seemingly and selectively singled out to cognizantly rationalize through self-awareness conjoined with the ability to reasonably understand and consider as if to discover the grand wonders of our universe as privileged individuals with such foresight and intelligence in having the endowment to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Ironically in spite of all of this the dilemma remains that even with such wit comes the abuse of fallible people to have the propensity to be hostilely predisposed against a Creator God as suppressing their knowledge by creating their own counterfeit worldview as deliberately limiting their potentiality as distorting a tangible reality as extended towards that of the infinite and limitless power in displaying the undeniable greatness of God’s glory. I have written more about this design (teleological) model and I welcome you to discover the Supreme Intelligence apart from the impersonal random chance hypothesis.

jesusandjews.com/wordpress/2013/12/08/is-life-an-accident/

Romans 1:18-25 

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
To begin with Nietzsche is an example of this fomented and rebellious rage towards killing God as he is emotionally driven to pontificate his philosophy as to indoctrinate his parishioners into believing a salvation of liberation with a speech of self motivation towards a rugged individualism that mankind must devise his own way of life and yet with such self-determination his seemingly powerful words became no more than an empty message of quotable rhetoric that lacks objectivity as just another round of reactionary statements in taking a subjective blind leap of faith and whose legacy of strength is weakened with such irony as succumbing to the epitome of human frailty and weakness as suffering an untimely death.
Another character to take over the pulpit would be Jean-Paul Sartre who preaches an existentialism that life is absurd, and if people’s lives are to have any purpose then a person must conjure up that meaning for themselves. That mankind is autonomous and has absolute freedom and that they determine their own essence by their personal choices as defining their character as to evolve into what they are becoming. Thus mankind is enveloped in subjectivity and must authenticate themselves as they are truly alone. All of this is given as the solution towards meaning and commitment, yet many have left this idealism as finding it unsatisfying including Sartre himself.
Perhaps as Sartre meditated on the nihilistic values of a meaningless life maybe he came to the reality of his own woeful and dreadful end as facing his demise and mortality as doubting Heidegger’s devotional on angst and death. With such brevity of time it often produces truthful and honest reflection as if to regain a sense of confidence in rationality towards theism when facing actuality, not propositions, as the triumphal exit led Sartre to finally confess upon his deathbed with a summarative quote, though not popularized, as stating “I do not feel that I am a product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, and prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here: and this idea of a creating hand refers to God.”
This thought is carried forward by the summation of Solomon’s wisdom and life after having “seen and done it all” in concluding that
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

13 The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
In point Nietzsche, though intellectual, died a crazed mad man and Sartre, though blind, came to see the “good faith” as recanting his previous commitment towards what he termed to be “bad faith” as leaving the revolution as a militant atheist in dropping his defensive right to bear arms as laying down his weaponry to recognize that all along he was fighting the wrong enemy.
Thus these self-made supermen and trailblazers of atheism have attempted to clear a path as joining others to themselves, as the blind leads the blind, away from God and while traversing this path some have lost their minds as ending up disillusioned, confused, lost, and disfranchised in this jungle of life as leading to nowhere. While others have humbly turned back as realizing that they were only headed towards the dead-end of a cliff in concluding that such avoidance is inevitably unavoidable and run back as if to concede or embrace the One to whom they willfully hated and rejected without a rightful cause.
www.leestrobel.com
www.josh.org
In closing I would like to offer an antidotal analogy to help think through this vital question of personhood by challenging the idea of independently defining self as simply saying that if you were deathly sick in respect to this crisis would you look for a real cure even if it seemed unpleasant at first to treat your disease or would you be equally satisfied as privately treating the ailment with the pleasantry of a sugar pill in hopes that the sweetness of a placebo effect would somehow miraculously have the curative powers to heal you of this fatal identity crisis? Not on your life, unless of course you were a diabetic, and yet people who are faced with this dilemma arrogantly think that they can competently treat themselves as having a PhD with the diagnostic ability of “knowing it all” when in reality they are pseudo malpractitioners and quacks as they prescribe and self medicate themselves with a preferential philosophy or religion of choice as stating it doesn’t really matter anyway as it’s all relative, as what really matters is what fulfills or satisfies you as giving you personal meaning and value in life and though this all sounds warm, fuzzy and accepting; the truth of the matter is that is may prove to be a bitter pill to swallow as realizing that your cure may really be poison.
Finally I apologize if I seem sarcastic or antagonistic with my statements its just I want to get you to seriously and critically realize that your identity is not a relativistic “free for all” as origins can carry a sense of responsibility and accountability which needs a positive and true identification not a playful or wishful ruse as with the pretentious immortalized men and gurus of the past, who have misused their charisma and talent to thrill and mesmerize their audiences as they are caught up in the passion of the moment as being hypnotically entertained with a sense of believability as accredited to their wondrous performance when in reality they are only pretending as staging themselves in a role by which they have personally casted themselves within the drama of a human production. Unfortunately many have failed to realize that the show is over and that the final curtain has fallen as the star of the show has left the stage and that no final standing ovation will ever bring them back again. My question to you is are you willing to vacate the theater or are you just looking for a replay or the next best show in town?
Anyway a true seeker should be willing to pursue reality and truth wherever it will take or lead them even if it is contrary to where at first they want to go. After all, therein, will be the answer to who you really are by which I reasonably believe is definable by the living eternal God rather than some dead mortal philosopher. Therefore in closing I would just like to encourage you, as a starting point, on this quest to research the Bible which states that trusting in the Lord is the beginning of this wisdom as reciprocated in a personal relationship with God by which you are perfectly matched as ultimately filling the void and emptiness as being properly identified by a Heavenly Father who orderly created you for His glory with the DNA of ultimate purpose.

Jeremiah 29:11

11For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
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© 2009 Josh McDowell Ministry. All rights reserved. No part of these Materials may be changed in any way or reproduced in any form without written permission from Josh McDowell Ministry, 660 International Parkway, Richardson, TX 75081. www.josh.org. +1 972 907 1000. Used by Permission.

Perhaps we may self define love like the old 60’s cartoon as stating “Love is”. Love for some may be an infatuation with objects, things or perhaps reduced to an expression of human sexuality.  Others may see love as a warm fuzzy feeling or some temporal emotional high. Some trying to be more spiritual in scope may explain it in a mystical pantheistic way of stating that love is god and to act accordingly is to be enlightened as connecting to the divine. Yet others may see real and significant expressions of love through the beauty of human relationships, and even at that, love is still negligent to fully embrace the richness and purity as can only be expressed through an omnibenevolent being namely God. Thus love is a key component or quintessential element as identifying God’s very character, 1 John 4:8.

God’s love is perfect and it is that type of love that humanity longs for; especially as we have all experienced the disappointments and failures of human love through broken relationships making some skeptical that love is even obtainable as based on the evidence of human tragedy as downgrading it to a more crass form of expression as seeing it as merely being conditioned on reciprocation, temporal, inadequate, shallow, subjective, and unreliable. Even false religions are not able to adequately adept to handle this dilemma of a love shortage and can only philosophize this shortcoming by avoiding it’s pitfall as denying the self of desire or by dealing with it as a fantasy which is only illusional while others may not even emphasize it at all but rather focus more on the goal of world domination which may necessitate its antithetical enemy of violence.

Many look for naturalistic ways to either band-aid the situation or to seek the counseling and therapy of human healers to deal with this disease of a love loss as spending billions of dollars to treat this societal pandemic malady and though the bible likewise diagnoses the human condition as being seriously flawed in its self-absorption the good news is that there is a remedy towards healing the broken-hearted in finding the kind of love which the human soul yearns for:

2 timothy 3: 2-4  “Lovers of Self ”

2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God

Luke 4:18-19  “Jesus is Love Personified”

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

God’s love for mankind has a fuller, in-depth quality to this vocabulary and sets the standard as being unlimited in scope and application apart from the deterministic values of human nature.

In essence,  love in God’s terms is not a flippant word which is conditionally trivial with the superficiality of being diminished within a single event or moment in time such as with the old adage of ‘falling out of love’, but rather it is steadfast, enduring and everlasting as it carries such weight and authority especially as He strives to lovingly reconcile us to Himself as His beloved creatures.

Romans 8:35-39

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,“For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Colossians 1:20-22 

20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. 21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

One of the highest forms of human love that we can possibly fathom is often maternal/ paternal and yet as good as that can be, it is still the Heavenly Father’s love which allows for this intimacy between human creatures to begin with and yet even at that; it can only go so far in comparison to God’s love.

Mt 7:11

11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

God’s love  carries the action of a verb to such a level that it is sacrificial in nature and we see this explicitly incarnational in the person and work of Jesus.

John 3:16

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

God’s love is so tenacious as even pursuing and reaching out towards others who by nature are hostile to Him as an enemy.

Romans 5:8

8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:10

10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

1 John 4:10

10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

In closing perhaps you have written off love as some fictional fairy tale and have instead settled for using artificial fillers as stuffing yourself with alternative junk food as an attempt to satiate your emptiness and void in your heart but they too will fail to truly satisfy as leaving you unhealthy and anemic as you hunger and crave for real sustenance which is elemental and basic to the health of your soul apart from this temporal curbing of your appetite.

Thus it is God’s love which you may be missing and as such is defined with a greatness or fullness that surpasses your very knowledge and experience.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Galatians 5:22-23

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Finally, as I have previously mentioned human love is only finite especially as people are only here for a very short time and though human interaction is essential and necessary it does not equate to being the ultimate reality or fulfillment as God can only truly meet that expectation.

Maybe you have compromised God with a counterfeit by looking for love in all the wrong places and yet He cares for you as the ‘Lover of your Soul’; whose love never fails. My friend I would like to encourage you to experience His love today and forevermore. Here is how to know and receive His gift of love.

How to know God

Lastly here are some real stories of people who had life changing experiences with the love of God. Will you be next ?

jesusandjews.com/wordpress/my-personal-testimony-with-jesus/

www.cbn.com/700club/features/Amazing/

Atheist and Agnostic Resources

English Articles on Atheism and Agnosticism

Seekers

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version^® (ESV^®) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007