A grandmother takes on the role of raising her grandson who has been abandoned by his parents into a world that does not want him.
She loves him. She trains him to be a gentleman. She disciplines him in the best way she knows how. She takes him to church. She makes him go to school.
He gets angry. He does drugs. He drinks. He sleeps around. He becomes violent with the woman who took him in.
But she won’t let him go. She loves him. She sees her daughter in him. She wants to rescue him from himself. So she tries harder.
At last when he has left her black and blue and broken her arm the police step in. The boy goes to prison. She forgives him. She visits him. She writes him. She can’t let him go. He is precious to her.
“While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8
Do you understand that you are precious to God? This is one of the boundaries of living our brick. If we are ever to truly live for God we have to understand that He loves us.
Now I think that when I say “God loves you.” What a lot of people hear is “God doesn’t really like you but he tolerates you because He is love.”
Man, we have to get over this broken-down mind-set. When I first became a Christian we used to sing this hymn that very nearly wrecked my theology.
“Alas and did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die? Would He devote that sacred head for such a WORM as I.” (At the Cross Ralph Hudson/ Issac Watts).
Now no offense to Mr. Hudson or Mr. Watts but while I might view myself as a worm my God does not see me that way! Further people encouraging me to sing about my worminess does little to help me see how precious I am to God. Nor does it help me to put God’s love in its proper perspective.
If Gram can love her grandson and still defend him in front of others after all he has done to her, what are we saying about the love of God when we think He sees us as a worm because of our sin? Do we think God’s love is less than Gramma’s?
Now I am not downplaying the severity of sin. I know God hates it. I know it separates us from Him. I also know that because of sin most of mankind will be consigned forever into the flames of Hell (See Mat. 7:13).
Yet while all these things are true, there will never come a day when God says of any man or woman “Satan you’re right this one a worthless slab of worm-flesh. I gladly give them over to you. Hurt ’em bad.”
The devil wants us to believe that God does have this attitude. Have you never heard his wheedling voice say “That’s it you have sinned too much God hates you now.”?
The truth is God could never hate us. He loves us.
Our current youth intern got it right when he preached saying “You cannot earn God’s love because you already have it.”
God loves you and you are precious to Him. He calls you the “apple of His eye.” (Deut 32:10, Psalm 17:8). The apple of the eye is the pupil. When a man is attacked defending the apple of his eye is a primal instinct. It is God’s instinct to protect our lives. That is why when we got ourselves in trouble with sin He was willing to go to the length of sending His son to die in our place. Protecting us is something He does at the gut level. We are precious to Him and there is precious little He wouldn’t do to keep us eternally safe.
Brothers and Sisters live the brick! Embrace God’s love!
Reinventing the We'll 