God is...GREAT (part 2)
Preliminary:
how life-changing this message is about a God who loves us without condition.
Then I noticed a young woman who was waiting to speak with me, so I stepped to where she was standing and introduced myself. She then said, with a huge smile on her face, “Thank you so much for that sermon. It was very freeing!”
The glow returned for a moment, until she went on.
“You see,” she said, “I’ve been living with my boyfriend for the past six months, and I was raised in a church that said this was a sin, and I felt really guilty. But this morning you said that God loves us without condition, and that Jesus has forgiven all of our sins, and then I realized that my guilt was unnecessary. Jesus paid it all! So I just wanted to say thank you for such a liberating message.” She shook my hand and started to walk away with a bounce in her step, like a woman who has just been told by her doctor that she is cancer-free.
My heart sank.
I realized then that simply proclaiming the good news that God loves us no matter what we do is not the whole story. What she failed to understand, and what I later was able to explain to her, is that our loving God is also “a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). That may sound daunting, but it is actually very good news. There was much I needed to explain to that young woman about the holiness and purity of God. Fortunately, that brief interaction was not our last discussion.
God is…Great because God is Holy
God is…Great because God is Beautiful
Edwards (1765/1960; 1998) believed that God’s glory and beauty were identical
Holiness is the beauty of the Lord God of hosts. Thou canst not separate the one from the other. To have it, thou must have Him. Nor will it be hard to obtain either, for He longs to enter into thy being. Thy longing is the faint response of thy heart to His call.
F.B. MEYER.