John 13:34,35, Ephesians 1:3-8
Mothers’ Day – a day to celebrate motherhood. One thing we all have in common is that we each have a mother and we take this day to remember her whether she’s still around or not.
I have found a lot of humour – cartoons, jokes and stories both humorous and hart-warming. And then there are the tributes. And in the tributes one word comes to the fore – love. And the love that inspires tributes to mothers is called unconditional love, a mother’s love, pure love or real love to distinguish it from affection, liking, kindness and conditional love.
The source of all true love is our Creator God who made us, like God’self, to love and be loved. Unconditional love – the fullest, truest mother-love – comes from the Divine Parent. Wikipedia defines unconditional love as God’s love for a person irrespective of that person’s love for God.
“Indeed, a quick glance around this broken world makes it painfully obvious that we don’t need more arguments on behalf of God; we need more people who live as if they are in covenant with Unconditional Love, which is our best definition of God.” -Robin R. Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church: How to stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus, (p. 21)”
“What it’s like to be a parent: It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do but in exchange it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love.” -Nicholas Sparks, The Wedding
People are imperfect and love imperfectly; God is perfect and loves perfectly.
Let’s turn to a question we’ve all asked at one time or another:
How much am I worth? What value’s in me? Do I count? Do I matter?
That might look like four questions but it’s the same question stated four ways.
Is this a question you’ve asked? I know it is.
And we know the answer – ‘I am worth everything in the eyes of God.’ But we so often forget. We find it so hard to believe that the God who made us, who the Bible says loves us so much he died for us, loves us unconditionally.
In the last week while preparing this message I have had the joy of ‘meeting’, so to speak, some new people who spoke and wrote some very interesting and valuable things. One of these is Berni Dymet. Berni is as Australian broadcaster and blogger. I’ll share his story from his website. It’s headed, what makes Berni Dymet tick?
“Well, here’s the thing. I came to faith in Jesus later in life – age 36. It was a terribly difficult time. A dark time. And somewhere in that place, Jesus came to find me.
Me! I still can’t believe it.
Why me? I didn’t deserve it. In fact, I should have been way down at the end of the queue. And then, not long after He came for me, I learned about grace. I’m still trying to wrap my heart around that mind-blowing concept. God’s grace!
I knew not long after I gave my life to Christ, that I couldn’t just sit there. I had to tell people. This isn’t just good news – it’s stunningly fantastic news – that the world needs to hear.”
Berni is obviously excited about what he has discovered about God and himself. And he’s not the only one. Another I came across is Dr. Brene Brown. Brene has done a lot of research into the ways people connect and more recently focused on vulnerability. In a 20 minute talk she opens up some of the expectations we absorb from our culture, particularly the way we think our lives have to be extraordinary if they are to count and people have to see our wonderful lives for them to have meaning. (This is very much the ethos of things like Facebook.) The flip-side, of course, is the notion that ordinary living is meaningless.
Dr. Brown points out the truth that the ordinary everyday life is, in fact, where it’s at. Also that it is good to be grateful for ordinary life. Have you ever got up in the morning thinking, “I haven’t had enough sleep.” And have you come to the end of the day and thought, “I haven’t done enough.”? It seems like we never have enough of anything.
Far from needing to be someone special who has super powers and super experiences we are and we have enough. Brene doesn’t mention God by name but what she says is what God says: we are enough; we have enough, we do enough. God loves us as we are.
Throughout human existence people have tried to figure out how to connect with their Creator. Two themes run through all of this. One is that we have to do certain things and God will approve of us. The other is that there is nothing we can do to win God’s approval. One is true; the other is not.
Unfortunately the one that is false dominates human thinking. The idea that we don’t deserve to be God’s friends is valid; we don’t. As Berni said, he should be at the end of the queue. But we all should be at the end of the queue. Face it – we’re rejects, the lot of us. And that’s exactly what God wants us to face up to. We deserve nothing; we’re hopeless sinners. But we so don’t want to admit it.
We want to prove to ourselves and everybody else that we’re good enough for God, good enough for one another, good enough for ourselves. The Bible calls it pride, it comes from our fallen human nature and is reinforced by our culture, and it drives us mad.
We can’t do it. God says so and experience proves it. We can never do enough to earn God’s love, deserve forgiveness, qualify for heaven. Why ever do we keep trying?
I think it was Donald Miller (I mentioned him last week) – or a friend of his, who said that our sin is not so much our wanting to be independent of God, though that is bad enough, it is more that we have not returned God’s love for us. God’s love is largely unrequited and God is heartbroken; so frustrated in fact that it killed him. Jesus didn’t die directly from the wounds inflicted by the flogging and the nails of the cross – he died of a broken heart. Broken by human arrogance and selfishness.
Jesus’ death and resurrection shows how much God loves us (John 3:16) and it is through that death that we are forgiven and welcomed into a relationship with God. This is God’s gift and there is nothing we can do to earn it or deserve it or qualify for it.
“The only way love can last a lifetime is if it’s unconditional. The truth is this: love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love.” -Stephen Kendrick, The Love Dare
There’s no way to improve on God’s gift. What my parents said when we grumbled about our food applies here: “Take what you’re given and be thankful.” And what God gives is certainly not to be grumbled about. It is, as Berni says, stunningly fantastic news.
God loves ordinary, everyday, unpretentious us. Accept the gift and be very, very grateful.
How do we remember this? The questions of our identity and value are before us every day. We need some reminders of our identity in Christ. I have a whole sheet of Bible verses courtesy of Donald Miller and you’ll find a copy here. And the article that goes with it is here.
And I will remind you. Have I talked about this before? Many times. Will I talk about it again? Too right I will. It is the most important thing for us to get and I won’t rest until we get it.