God's crazy love for us!

October 23rd

Ok, I've been meaning to type this up for about 3 weeks if not more. It was a day when I was reminded of God's amazing and crazy love for us and I've been wanting to share it for a while, but got so distracted with things happening that I put it on the back burner.
Sorry for depriving you of this wonderful reminder. haha. Here I go....

So, one thing that I've learned on this journey is that finding some consistencies through this crazy inconsistent job (journey) keeps us, traveling media technicians somewhat sane.
For example, always picking the bed on the right side of the room, or picking the right side of a bed when we share one, or always grabbing my laptop, pillow, perse and keys once we get to a motel and grabbing our keys after paying and going straight to the room, and then going back down empty handed in order to grab my duffle bag, some food, and my toiletries. Or as soon as I get to a new motel, I scope the surroundings to find a private spot outside in which I can sit, read, listen to music or talk on the phone. Or lighting incense in rooms so I can have a familiar smell to make myself feel more "at home." Or always sleeping in the car while Tiff is driving (hehe). Or find consistent hobbies on the road such as photography, phone conversations, specific shows that I follow, facebook, or certain books (a lot of Max Lucado) to keep me going. (you must be laughing, cus these aren't really hobbies).
Well, you get my point. I've never been the type of person to have routines in my life, or do things a certain way, but in this case, I feel the need to create such consistencies in order to feel somewhat sane through this inconsistent journey.

Well, I was thinking about this, and realized that one thing that is and will always be consistent is God's Crazy Love for us!!! Some of you might have read the book "Crazy Love" which I once owned but never read, and now regret not doing so.
But the church we went to when we were in Nixa, MO on October 3rd called "the Bridge" was doing a series on teaching based on this book.
This message just reminded me of the relationship we are in. One in which our Creator and Father is just flat out CRAZY about us. It's phenomenal, fantastic, beyond our comprehension and so overwhelmingly good!
We read out of Eph 2. It reminds us of where we came from and where we are today only by HIS grace and HIS crazy awesome love for us.

To get an accurate view of who God is, we can simply start by lookin at who WE are first. Since we were created in His very image. (verse 3).
Let's look at where we came from and how far we've come since then. We used to be objects of wrath. It's actually hard to see myself this way because as long as I can remember, I've known Christ. I've never seen myself before Christ, since I accepted Him at a very young age. But I have seen myself as a Christian Atheist (a Christian who procclaims to know the word but fails to follow it fully. One who has received Christ as their Savior but not as their LORD. There is a big difference.) plenty of times. In fact I still struggle with being that person a  lot of times.

Sometimes I feel like it's easier when you are a newborn Christian at a late age, because it helps light that fire and passion. Because if you've lived most of your life without Christ and don't know anything about His amazing love, and suddenly discover it after living a good amount of your life without Him, it's like the lightbulb effect pops in your mind and you suddenly deny your old self to fully commit your life to Him and truly view Him not just as your Savior, the one who died on the cross for you and forgave you for all of your sins, but you also see Him and accept Him as your Lord. One who will take complete control over every aspect of your life and to whom you fully surrender your everything/being to.
When you accept Christ at a young age, a lot of times you are sheltered from a lot and curious about "the world" and take the amazing gift of grace and salvation for granted out of curiosity and comfort in knowing you are saved.
That's just how I see it.

So anyways, back on track, even though I don't remember my life without Christ, it doesn't matter because we are reminded that by nature, we deserve death and the wrath of God ever since the fall.
The climax of story here is the part where we find GRACE (verse 4). Thanks to his crazy love for us!
In verses 8 and 9, it says that it is by grace that we have been saved and not by works, so that no one can boast about it.
I've been reading the book "The Christian Atheist," by Craig Goeshel who gives his testimony about how his parents taught him to go to church but he never understood Christianity because he never got anything out of the few sermons he'd ever heard. It wasn't until he went to college and did the whole partying and playing around and got in trouble for it, that he decided to dig in the Bible to find out more about and the verse that changed his life, was this one. Ephesians 2:8, because he realized that he wasn't a failure in God's eyes just because he did the things he did, in fact he realized God loved him and the things he did didn't matter, it was his heart that God was after. not his actions! This verse turned everything around for him.
Our faith is a gift from God. That really struck me. I never thought about faight as a gift. Maybe I'm just slow. Or maybe once again, it's something I took for granted since I've had it for as long as I can remember. But God GAVE us the ability to have faith. No wonder so many people don't understand our crazy belief about there being a God who gave His son to die for us. It sounds ludacris. But we've all been given this gift of faith, to believe in the unseen, but a lot of us don't accept it, and therefore don't believe, and therefore lack faith and hope and are miserable. God is the author of my faith. He gave me the priviledge and beauty of Faith, hope, and belief which allows me to see His beauty in everything, to believe it  and love it. Love it and learn from it.
God doesn't need, yet he wants us. How special is that. Why would God want to use someone like me to do His work? kinda crazy to think about.

As humans, we forget that love is completely unconditional. He doesn't need us. Who dares believe that God needs them. He wants and chooses us. He finds us and accepts us as we are.
A lot of times love comes with conditions or conveniences for us. I'll love you if you do this for me. Or because you are so amazing, I love you. or I'm dating this guy because he has or does this or that. Well is that why you love people, or do these attributes help you love them?
This kind of love has nothing to do with the crazy love God has for us. NOthing!
In one of my recent posts, I talked about love and how hard it is for me to love every body equally. It's a sin when I love one person more than I love another.
Mark 12:30-31

And you must love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all your soul, and all your mind, and all your strength. The second (command) is equally important: "Love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these."
That's the way God loves each of us. The least we can do is love Him that way back, and love each other as well.
I keep being reminded of how important love is. I am a people lover, that's for sure, yet so often I find myself judging, criticizing, and lacking the ability to show love for some.
God has a crazy love for each of us, can we attempt to love Him back equally?
In that attempt, we can learn to love others equally as well. It's not for nothing that we find these two great commandments in various different books of the Bible. And it's not for nothing that these commandmants are called the greatest. From these two commandments, we can accomplish any other. I believe that.

SOOO there it is. I had to share it with ya.

I was actually talking about how much I love being able to go different churches each sunday. The beauty of it is getting spiritual wealth from completely different buffet tables. Yes it's nice to go to the same Church week after week, following a certain book of the Bible, or book period, but this way I get variety out of it I'm never bored. Always trying to focus  and understand what's going on.
It's like being in a cafeteria and having different buffet tables with all sorts of variety foods and I get to pick and choose. Do I want chinese? Pasta? rice? pizza? haha I love it!!

Today is October 24th and the Church we went to was literally right next to our motel. We walked in and everybody was SO very nice.
Uh Oh. I'm sitting at a Mcdonald's that's a 20 min walk away from my motel and I see lightning outside. I wouldn't want the rain to catch me. So I will upload this post and continue all of this later on.

PEACE. pray I don't get soaked (I just got my hair done. haha)

DJO