Love With A Purpose Series

“First Love: Love with a Purpose

One of the catch phrases of Christianity is the phrase, “personal Lord and Savior.” It’s a good phrase; it implies several things:

§ It implies that Jesus and God are personal, that they’re intimately concerned with the very smallest details of your life. It implies that they know every situation and problem that comes into your life.

§ The word “Lord” can also mean leader, or director. It’s like a personal coach or teacher

o I think of it like a personal piano teacher. Your teacher knows your skills and knows how to get you to the next level because they’ve been there before. They may have you do drills or exercises that will help you get stronger or more dexterity in your hands. Because the teacher is older, more experienced, hired to help you get better, and let’s face it better, than you are, you trust what he tells you and you practice what he says to practice. That’s the idea behind Jesus being “LORD”

§ Savior implies the image of a worried father running into a burning house to save his son or daughter. The child is unable to rescue himself, so the father risks his own life for the safety of his child because his love is so strong.

That’s an amazing image when we think about God that way. We’ve all had a crummy teacher or a bad coach or a father that would probably not risk his own skin to save us from an ant bite, much less a burning building. God, though, is the best parts of all of those people, without the worst parts. Any good that you see in a person or teacher or coach is a reflection of something good that’s in God.

The “personal Lord and Savior” aspect of God is a wonderful thing to think about and meditate on. It means that He knows all the things about you, even the things that you’d probably want to hide, and He loves you anyway. He loves you enough to want what’s best for you and protect you from the things that will hurt you, so He coaches you and directs you. He loves you so much that He would put His own life on the line to make sure that you get out of the burning house alive. That’s an amazing image.

That’s a big thing to grab onto, but is there a bigger picture? Is that all it is? It’d be pretty annoying if you had someone around watching your every move, correcting every single thing you did wrong, pointing out all of your mistakes, and the reason they said they did it is because they wanted you to be better.

§ That’s not very compelling is it? After awhile, you’d probably turn around and yell at your teacher that you’re doing OK on your own, so bug off.

§ That’s one thing that happens when we get so caught up in the “personal Lord and Savior” bit. We don’t have any context with which to understand why He’s doing what He’s doing.

§ You want me to be better for what? You want me to do this why? You want me to be like this for what reason?

§ These questions are bound to come, and they’re right to ask if we get so hung up on the “personal Lord and Savior” that we lose sight of the bigger context. Missing the forest for the trees so to speak.

I want to read a passage from the Bible, then we’ll come back to this and hopefully get a glimpse of the big picture.

Exodus 3:1-10

1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight-why the bush does not burn up." 4 When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!" And Moses said, "Here I am." 5 "Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground." 6 Then he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. 7 The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey-the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."