Do you know why it’s foolishness to the world the ways of God, Who He truly is, His nature and attributes?  It’s all because a human intellect can only go so far.  It’s capacity to comprehend cannot even scratch the surface of knowing His inexhaustible greatness. A created being can never be greater than the CREATOR.   Yet man continues to pridefully deny His existence and tries to figure out by himself what life is all about.  No wonder we still live in a world where peace is undeniably inexistent.

JESUS is the PRINCE OF PEACE and apart from Him, there will be no peace.

JESUS is the HOPE of Glory, therefore PEACE is still a possibility in the world of impossibility.

Before I became a believer, I used to be a bookworm.  I have always found myself in bookstores looking for books after books to suffice my hunger for answers to questions I couldn’t even define.  There was just such emptiness in my heart that I was longing to be filled.  I wanted to understand what life is really all about.  I desired satisfaction.  I desired more and more knowledge that felt like a bottomless well.  No matter how much I read, nothing met my need.  No one has spoken to me about Jesus and why He came. Or maybe I could have had a closed heart to listen then.  No one shared with me about reading the Bible although I had one lying at my bedside table for years. Or maybe it wasn’t my time then.

In all honesty, I tried to read it until I was halfway through but I understood nothing.  I was kinda excited on some stories that I heard from people that I discovered were written in there.  But apart from them, nothing caused me to read any further.

But God Who is RICH in mercy and ABOUNDING in love had His eyes on me.  He saw with knowledge and compassion how I hungered for answers.  Little did I know that at one designated moment, He would meet my need in a very casual way.  I didn’t go to church to search for it nor talk to a believer about it.  Ironically, I was asking two of my friends who were of another faith about their religious book.  And at that exact second, while my words were still conveying my need for their book, a thought came to my mind and just ambushed our conversation.  I heard from the depths of my heart these words, “you have your Bible lying at your bedside table, why don’t you read it?”  Surprisingly, I stopped talking and heard myself saying to them, “Oh I’m fine.  It’s okay, no need to get one for me.  Thank you.”

Those words never left me.  They resonated within me until I got home.  I went straight to my bedroom, shut the door and prayed.  All I said was, “Please, Lord, make me understand if You really want me to read Your Word.”  Lo and behold, the very moment I opened my Bible, it felt like the words written came out from the pages and became so alive.  Holy Spirit opened the eyes of my understanding and made my heart burn and yearn for more that for two consecutive years, I did not read any other book but His Word for it satisfied the longings of my heart and still continues to today and will go on forever.

When I look back and remember how it all happened, there are no other words to say but … “WHAT MANNER OF LOVE THE FATHER HAS FOR ME?” (1 John 3:1 KJV)   I love how the AMPC says it, “SEE WHAT [AN INCREDIBLE] QUALITY OF LOVE THE FATHER HAS GIVEN (SHOWN, BESTOWED ON) US, THAT WE SHOULD [BE PERMITTED TO] BE NAMED AND CALLED AND COUNTED THE CHILDREN OF GOD!  AND SO WE ARE!”

Surely you, too, have your own personal experience as to how the Lord captured your heart and how He introduced Himself to you.  If there are 2.4 Billion of us believers now, assuredly He had 2.4 Billion unique, especially cut out for us, ways of initially introducing Himself to us and relaying to us how much He loves us

Love cannot be love without an object of affection.  Love cannot be perfected unless it is expressed and demonstrated.  Eventually love will find its way back into the Giver of love, the Lover of all.  God Who is Love, though perfect and complete by Himself, chose you and I to be the apple of His eyes.  It may be incomprehensible let alone incomparable how He does it to each one individually and to all simultaneously, but what matters most is our awareness to the truth that the God of the universe LOVES you and I LIKE NO OTHER and He opened the door of invitation for us to explore and experience His perfect love when Jesus arms were stretched wide open at the cross.  Truly, what manner of love this is?

Our Father longs to have a relationship with His children, you and I, but relationship without experience is not relationship at all.  To experience Him is to spend time with Him where divine encounters are birthed and built.  The more we have experiences with Him, the deeper our relationship will go.  The deeper it gets, the stronger our relationship will be.

Let us be intentional in knowing our Lord Jesus Christ and not just knowing ABOUT Him.  He came to reveal Our Father, His LOVE and His attributes.  He said, “If you seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.” (John 14:9)  But until we come to acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God and that He is the only Begotten Son in Whom the perfect and great love of our Father was powerfully demonstrated at the cross, we deprive ourselves from encountering Him, walking and talking with Him and doing things together with Him.  He gave us Holy Spirit to abide in us forever so that WE WILL NO LONGER BE ALONE,  no longer orphans but sons, no longer fatherless but sons, no longer slaves but sons, no longer outcasts but sons.  What manner of love He has for you and me?

Everything that Jesus endured was for the JOY that was set before Him that He desired you and I to be welcomed back into the loving embrace of our Father, righteous, blameless and pure, WASHED BY THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB OF GOD, filled with Holy Spirit, permitted, named, called and counted as children of God.   Yes, what manner of love the Father has for us?  Though His love was put on the line, though Jesus suffered and died, our Heavenly Father never withdrew His love nor changed His mind.

When we come to think and meditate on these, there is nothing greater than the love that Jesus perfectly and powerfully demonstrated at the cross and gave us the greatest value that is beyond what we can think or imagine.  Yes, you and I are PRICELESS, nothing equal to the price He paid that it took Jesus to be bruised and broken beyond recognition for us to be healed and whole.  It took His Blood to make our slate clean and clothe us with His robe of righteousness, postured us to receive ALL the riches in glory of the inheritance of the saints.   It took Jesus to be separated from the Father for a moment that we may be restored and be reconciled back to Himself FOR ETERNITY just as He originally  planned it to be.

“SEE what GREAT LOVE the Father has LAVISHED on us, that we should be called children of God!  And THAT IS WHAT WE ARE!  (1 John 3:1 NIV)

Yes, HE LAVISHED, bestowed profusely, abundantly, excessively, extravagantly, extremely HIS GREAT LOVE FOR US that He called us to Himself that we may come to know WHAT MANNER OF A FATHER HE IS and WHAT MANNER OF LOVE HE HAS for His sons and daughters, you and I.

 

Photo Credit:  Erik Quianzon