Go!

How many of us have heard the saying, “God loves you just the way you are!”
It sounds nice. It sounds spiritual. The problem is that it is only a half-truth.

Let’s examine it a bit closer.

Think of the following people:

Adolf Hitler

Charles Manson

Idi Amin

Osama Ben Laden

Now, say the above statement, “God loves you just the way you are!”….with one little bitty change. Insert any of the above names in place of the word “you”. Doesn’t sound so nice does it?

I thought of this when reading the scripture for yesterday.

In Genesis 12:1 it says, “The Lord had said to Abram, Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.”
You see, when God is your Lord, when you accept Jesus as your Savior he has plans for you. He has “places for you to go, people for you to meet”. He has work for you to do. He has changes in you He wants to make.

One thing I have learned is this: you cannot go with God and yet, stay where you are.

God will always call you to somewhere else in your life…either a new place physically, or financially, or emotionally, or spiritually, but He does not just want us to stay where we were when we first became one of His.

So what does all this have to do with the little phrase, “God loves you just the way you are.”?

As I said at the start of this blog, it is only a half-truth. It is not a complete statement.

The full truth is this, “God loves you just as you are, but He loves you too much to let you stay the way you are.”

When He called Abraham to be the father of the nation of Israel, and the father of the faithful, He told Abe to go. He didn’t leave Him where he was, but pushed Him out of his comfort zone into a place where Abe had never been before. He loved Abe just as he was, but He loved him way, way, way too much to let him stay there and miss out on all that He (God) had in store for him (Abraham).

So what about you and me. What are we missing out on because we want to stay comfortable? What are we missing out on because we want to stay safe? What are we missing out on because we want to stay in our nice little place in life? My friend Bob has a blog called “On the Road to Ruin”. We don’t think of the gospel that way, but in reality, the change that the gospel makes should ruin our lives of complacency! It should ruin our comfortable cozy Christian club! It should move us from the comfort zone into the battle zone!

So whadda we sittin’ around for!

Let’s go!

And remember,

The first three letters in Satan is “sat”.

The first two letters in God are “go”

Ok, so there’s that.

Pastor Dave