Our relationship with God does not only mean that He is our Savior and Lord. Our Lord Jesus is indeed our Savior, for He died on the cross for our sins to save and forgive us. He is our Savior who helps us with our problems and encourages us when we are discouraged. In the New Testament, we learned about how Jesus healed the sick, cast out demons from those who were demon-possessed, and raised people from the dead. However, if we are only treating our Lord Jesus as a Savior and nothing else, then we will only go to Him when we are in desperate need. We will only treat Jesus as our safety net. We will only call Him when we need His help, but other than that, we will just do our own thing. Similarly, if we are only treating our God as Lord, then everything that we do is obey Him. We can easily fall into legalism because our focus is not to disobey Him. As a result, our relation to God is based on our performance. We have to remember that God saved us through our Lord Jesus because of His sacrificial love for us. God wants us to believe and accept Jesus as our Lord because God wants to reign in our hearts to lead us to a godly life because He loves us.
Our relationship with God is based on His sacrificial love for us and our response to His love. Our Lord Jesus became our Savior and Lord because of God's sacrificial love for us. God created us for a relationship, like a father and his children. Some of us may not have a godly father figure in our lives, but our Heavenly Father is different than any father in this world. Our Heavenly Father is a holy and faithful Father to us all. He does not have favoritism. He loves all of us equally. He can never love us less or fully because He always loves us to the fullest. No matter what we have done, even when we fail or sin, He still loves us the same. We hurt our relationship with Him when we sin or rebel against Him, but He never stops loving us. He will lovingly discipline us to correct and lead us back to the right way.
God is our Savior and Lord, but He is not distant. He is not a God that we only need when we are in trouble or that we only obey because He is our Lord. God saves us because He loves us, and He is our Lord because He loves us. As a result, we respond to Him as our Heavenly Father that we can know and love, as He loves us sacrificially.
Questions for application: (Think through these questions carefully, meditate on them while answering them, and let the Spirit of God speak to you.) What is God's reason for saving me? What is my reason for obeying God? How do I respond the God's sacrificial love for me?
Take a moment to write down all your worries today. Then, lift them up to God in prayer, surrendering them to His will and trusting in His guidance.
Prayer:
Dear Father in Heaven, please help me to know and understand how much you love me so that everything that I do is a response to love you. Thank you for saving me, and thank you for being my Lord, but please help me remember the reason for all of these. You love me sacrificially so that I can love you with all of my heart and life. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.
Comments