Amazing Love

Written by Amanda Allums

Looking around this world and seeing the corruption, calamity, and lawlessness can be downright depressing sometimes. However, this world has not gotten worse. It has been sinful since the fall of man. In Genesis 7, God flooded the earth in the days of Noah because the people on earth had become so wicked and sinful.

In Genesis 18, Abraham cried out to God for Sodom and asked God to spare the city from destruction because of their sin and wickedness. He pleaded with God multiple times, asking God to spare the city if he could find just fifty righteous people, and each time making the number of righteous people less and less because he realized just how wicked the people were. In the end, he could not even find ten righteous people. Sodom was known for their sins of homosexuality, adultery, gluttony, lying, pride, and many other sins. Sound familiar? Then, around twenty years later in Genesis 19 when Lot lived there, Sodom and Gomorrah were both destroyed by God by the raining down of sulfur and fire. Lot was spared because God remembered Abraham, but Lot’s wife looked back at the burning city and became a pillar of salt and died. 

I could go on and on with examples of how wicked this world has always been, but my main focus is not the wickedness and sins of the world, it is the amazing love of God! Even with all of the wicked people in this world, God still loves each and every one of them and desires to have them in heaven with Him for all eternity. Even the ones we find detestable like the people in the days of Noah and Abraham. There are people in this world today still acting on those very same sins of gluttony, pride, homosexuality, adultery, and more. How can God love them? And, how can God love us when He knows our heart, our motives, and our innermost thoughts? Because His love for us is not dependent on us! He doesn’t love us more when we are good, just like He doesn’t love us less when we are bad. His love is unconditional. 

When we sin, He doesn’t see us as detestable and think we are a horrible person. No! He sees the person He created us to be and loves us, and is waiting patiently for us to come back to Him. God hates sin, not the sinner. We must also hate sin and not the sinner. We must take notes from Abraham and plead for God to spare the righteous. But, we also must pray for and witness to those who are deceived into thinking these types of sins and lifestyles are normal just because half the world is doing it. We must not ever get used to sin. That is a dangerous place to be. We must stay prayed up, read up, and remain vigilant because there will be a day when we are held accountable for our actions, or even lack thereof. We are not expected to be perfect, because there was only one perfect man, Jesus. But we must ask God to help us recognize sin for what it is so we can flee from it. 

I don’t know about you, but I am thankful for a God whose mercies are new every morning. I am thankful for a God who is there when I call upon Him. An example of this kind of love can be found in Hosea with the story of Hosea and Gomer. This story blows my mind because Hosea is the perfect example of love and obedience toward God. Gomer was a prostitute and Hosea followed God. God told Hosea to take Gomer for his wife and have children with her even though He knew the type of woman she was as a prostitute. The story of Hosea and Gomer also depicts God’s love for Israel. Hosea’s love for God shone bright to all the people he witnessed the gospel to around the city even though they thought he was a fool for the things he said and did in his life for God. He was obedient to God no matter the backlash he received all around him. Even his own wife, Gomer, was unfaithful to him, sold into slavery, and he still bought her back after all of that because of His love and obedience toward God.

Isn’t this how we treat God sometimes? We can all be Gomer at times. We admit that we are a sinner, ask God into our heart and get saved, then we still struggle to stay faithful to God because we get bored, tempted, or lazy. Why are people so easily swayed and deceived? You may not like the answer but it’s elementary and true: we fall back so easily because we are lazy, or simply like our sin. I am referring to mental laziness, not physical laziness. We neglect the repercussions or consequences because we choose not to read our Bible, pray, or go to church in order to stay educated on how the devil works. And, when we don’t know how the devil works, then we are easily deceived and don’t even recognize sin when we see it. 

Let’s face it, we live in a microwave, pressure cooker, air fryer type of world. We have developed in our society from reading books in a library, to VHS tapes that we had to wait for them to rewind, to DVDs and CDs which still required an extra machine and disc, to dial-up internet and that awful sound when it started up as we waited, and now everything is done wirelessly with a touch of a button on our phone and if the wifi is too slow we get frustrated. I will be honest, I loathe the buffering symbol. Our society has groomed us to be impatient and dissatisfied so our relationship with God suffers because we don’t want to take the time to invest in it. 

We no longer take pleasure in things that take time. And, let’s face it, relationships take time! My relationship with my husband took time to develop and it took years for us to get to where we are today. It took investing, communicating, asking questions, going on dates, learning each other, and yes, even arguing and forgiving. Even a good cake takes time to bake. Some of the most expensive things on this planet are expensive because they take time to make and years to grow. They are expensive because of the time invested. We even pay people for their time. Lawyers, accountants, and architects get paid a pretty price for the time it takes to put things on paper. Our relationship with God takes time in prayer, time in worship, and time in the Word. 

But God’s timing is not our timing and God is patient. God loves freely and completely and He bought us with the highest price ever paid for mankind–His Son, Jesus. God is a jealous God and He wants us all to Himself just like Hosea wanted Gomer all to himself. Because God knows that is where we belong, with Him for all eternity. My hope today is that if there is any sin in your life that you would put it under Jesus’ blood and ask for forgiveness and be devoted to Him. The blessings will far outweigh the trials in the end. Allow God’s love to flow through you and don’t become hardened or deceived by this sinful world that makes wrong seem right and right seem wrong. Read your Word and know what it says. Ask God to help you comprehend it so you can apply it to your life. That is the only way we will make it in this crazy world. God’s love is amazing, but the only way you will experience it is if you allow yourself to experience it and keep the scales from forming over your eyes. Jesus is coming soon! He loves us too much to leave us here much longer and my prayer is that we can bring as many people to heaven with us as possible. God is patient, but He’s not going to wait forever because He has already prepared a place for us.