Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Wednesday December 7 Turn where?


This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. --1 John 4:9-10 NIV

So far this week we have talked about what we need to turn from. As we learned Sunday, what we turn from is only part of the equation and I daresay, the lesser part at that. What is equally, if not more important is what we need to turn toward and that is God. We have been created by One who has no needs, for His pleasure and that pleasure is to be in relationship with us, the work of His hands. Consider these words from Richard Foster: Today the heart of a God is an open wound of love. He aches over our preoccupation. He mourns that we do not draw near to him. He grieves that we have forgotten him. He weeps over our obsession with muchness and manyness. He longs for our presence. And he is inviting us-- you and me--to come home, to come home to where we belong, to come home to that for which we were created. His arms are stretched wide to receive us. His heart is enlarged to take us in. (Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home Richard J. Foster; p.1). Have you ever stopped to consider what makes God's heart ache? Have you ever considered that it might be not having YOU fully in love with him? Perhaps it is time right now in this Holy season to do just that.

Prayer
Loving God, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, it may be a new idea that one as great as You would truly desire to be in relationship with small and weak and imperfect ones such as us.  Yet You have shown us by your advent here that is precisely what You desire. Help us O Lord to pause to take that in. Remind us of just how much it cost You to reconcile us to Yourself. And then Lord lead us we pray, to turn back to You with that same desire, which You have already planted in each one of us. We ask in the name of the one who makes that possible, our Lord Jesus Christ. AMEN!

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