Romans 8:31-39 (KJV)
31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.
34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I was doing some research about this passage and God's everlasting love as a way to expound on these verses and I came up with two things, on is a song that I dearly love to sing in church:
Hold to God's Unchanging Hand
Time is filled with swift transition,
Naught of earth unmoved can stand,
Build your hopes on things eternal,
Hold to God's unchanging hand.
Refrain:
Hold to God's unchanging hand,
Hold to God's unchanging hand;
Build your hopes on things eternal,
Hold to God's unchanging hand.
Trust in Him who will not leave you,
Whatsoever years may bring,
If by earthly friends forsaken
Still more closely to Him cling.
Covet not this world's vain riches
That so rapidly decay,
Seek to gain the heav'nly treasures,
They will never pass away.
When your journey is completed,
If to God you have been true,
Fair and bright the home in glory
Your enraptured soul will view.
The other thing I found is from Dr. Charles Stanley, of InTouch Ministries. The problem is that though Dr. Stanley's sermon about God's everlasting love is inspiring (you can read it yourself by following this link: http://www.intouch.org/you/article-archive/content?topic=the_eternal_love_of_god_article) I could not bring myself to put it on my blog. There are too many beliefs of Dr. Stanley and the Southern Baptist Convention that I find so very wrong. Yes, he may speak wonderfully about God's love, but then he turns around and shuns those (especially GLBT) people who do not believe what he believes. I find it hypocritical and abhorrent. God's love is God's LOVE and some so-called Christians do not get to decide who God loves, because God loves us all. His love is eternal, everlasting, and unchanging.
3 comments:
I think you hit on the exact problem so many of us (certainly I am included) have with organized religion today: the open, overt, shouted from the mountaintops hypocrisy that exists in it. While inside those doors, they preach love and acceptance, etc. etc. etc., then they go outdoors and open their mouth and what comes out is hate filled bigotry that God would never stand for. I sometimes wonder if they think that God only sees them when they are inside the church building. And I don't think it's a matter of shunning those who don't believe the way he believes, he shuns anyone who isn't the "same"...meaning LGBT, and others, even if they have no control over the particular trait that is hated at the moment.
Peace <3
Jay
The propensity of which you speak, preaching one thing and then going out of your way to practice another is exactly why I knew by the time I was 10 years old I would not be a Baptist as an adult.
Baptists do preach about God's love. They just attach strings to it that God never attached himself. I have long called their brand of preaching, "Grace but….."
Grace be unto you UNLESS you're a homosexual.
Grace be unto you UNLESS you've had an abortion.
Grace be unto you UNLESS you've been divorced.
Grace be unto you UNLESS you don't believe in and interpret the Bible as I do.
The list goes on and on.
It has always been a mystery to me why those who claim every word of the Bible is the word of God; and therefore, the truth always seem to put more emphasis on the words they can turn into hateful and judgmental condemnations than the words that speak of the unconditional love of God and of grace unmerited and undeserved, yet freely given.
Could it be that Baptists and others like them are laying their own hates and biases on the shoulders of God? I think so.
I like the way you put it, "Christians don't get to decide whom God loves."
Jack Scott
"God loves us all. His love is eternal, everlasting, and unchanging."
Once again you have delivered a better sermon than is ever preached in most pulpits! Thanks!!!
I read the posting this morning, and happend to see "Leslie Jordan: My Trip Down the Pink Carpet" on Netflix this afternoon. Amazing how your posting and his comedy act in Atlanta several years ago go hand in hand ~ especially his closing in the last ten minutes or so!!!
We are all His handiwork, and He loves each of us!!!
Thanks once more for a great posting!!
Post a Comment