Chippie the parakeet was sitting on his perch one morning … whistling a happy tune … when his owner decided to clean his cage … [pause] … with a vacuum cleaner. The phone rang and when Chippie’s owner went to answer it … well … that’s when Chippie’s day took a turn for the worse. While his owner was talking on the phone, she wasn’t paying attention to the business end of the vacuum hose and poor Ol’ Chippie got sucked into the vacuum cleaner … thwump!
Realizing what had happened, the woman tore open the dust bag expecting to find Chippie dead. Fortunately, Chippie wasn’t dead … just stunned and covered in dust. His owner stuck him under the faucet in the kitchen to rise him off. Chippie was alive and clean but now he was also cold and wet and shivering … so, his owner decided to dry him off and warm him up at the same time by using her hair dryer.
Poor Chippie! He went from singing on his perch to being sucked up in a vacuum cleaner … nearly drown in the kitchen sink … and blasted in the face with hot air.
A week later a friend of the owner called to ask how Chippie was doing. “Well,” she said, “he’s all right … although he doesn’t sing anymore.”
Have you ever felt like Ol’ Chippie? One minute you’re just going along … singing a song … minding your own business … when … all of a sudden … thwump! You’re sucked up by the trials of life … drowning in a flood of difficulties … and getting blasted in the face by a whirlwind of problems.
Life can sure come at us pretty fast and blind-side us, can’t it? There are times when the trials and troubles of life can suck the very song right out of your heart. Sometimes it seems like the deck is stacked against you or that you can’t get ahead no matter how hard you try, amen?
While serving in Vietnam during the Vietnam conflict, a young American soldier began dating a local Vietnamese woman … and she became pregnant. Right at that time, his tour of duty was over and he got shipped home stateside … never to be seen or heard from again … leaving behind his pregnant Vietnamese girlfriend with a terrible burden to bear. You see, dating a American soldier was bad enough … it brought shame to the family … but to have a half-bred American baby as the result of it … well … they disowned her and kicked her out of the house and she had to fend for herself.
When her baby was born … a girl … it was obvious that the child was of mixed race. She had light skin and wavy light-colored hair … which made her stick out like a sore thumb. Everywhere that she and her mother went, they were treated with scorn … spat upon and driven out by insults and curses. By the time the girl was seven years old, her mother couldn’t take all the rejection and insults any more and abandoned her. This seven-year-old girl did everything that she could to survive in the streets … eating whatever she could find wherever she could find it … her clothes quickly became nothing more than dirty rags … her hair matted and filled with lice … and always the insults and the curses. Everywhere that she went they called her an “ugly alien devil” in Vietnamese. They called her that so much that she came to believe that that who she was … an “ugly alien devil.” Why else would everyone call her that … why else would everyone treat her like that … why else would nobody help her or say a kind word to her unless it were true … that she was indeed an “ugly alien devil”?
Eventually she found her way to an orphanage that was willing to take her in. As you can imagine, an orphanage willing to take in an ugly alien devil wasn’t a very nice place. It was crowded and filthy … but it was better then living out in streets.
What would the Apostle Paul say to this little girl if he met her? He would probably squat down, take her dirty face between his hands, look her in the eyes, and tell her:
“I know that this is going to be impossible for you to understand, Precious One, given all that you’ve been through already, but God loves you, Dear Child! God loves you more than you could possibly imagine. Despite what everyone else is saying to you … God doesn’t see you as an ugly alien devil. He saw you living in the streets and it broke His heart, so He brought you to this place where He has better plans for you. He knows where you are … He knows what you’re going through … and even though you may not believe it, God is taking care of you.”
Paul knew a thing or two about hardship. “Five times I received from the Jews … my own people … the 40 lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was belted with stones, dragged out of town by my heels and left for dead on the town’s garbage heap. I have been shipwrecked three times … had to spend a night and day exposed on the open sea. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have had to ford dangerous rivers. I was constantly on the move … constantly on the look out for bandits … threatened by my own countrymen … chased by gentiles … everywhere I went, be it the city or the country or out in the middle of the ocean, trouble always seemed to find me” (2nd Corinthians 11; paraphrased by me).
And here’s what Paul learned from all of these harrowing experiences: [Read Romans 8:35-39.]
When Paul raises the question, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” … when he asks, “Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword” separate us from the love of Christ, he can confidently answer “NO!” because of what he experienced as he went through those trials. In fact, let’s take a look right now at the things … the “truths” … that Paul learned about God … about Jesus Christ … as a result of what he went through.
To begin with, Paul is talking about God’s love for us … “what can separate us from the love of God?” Paul is not talking about his love for God but God’s love for him. Why is that such an important distinction? Because our love is fickle. It’s dependent on our circumstances … upon the things that are happening in our lives … what day of the week it is … what side of the bed we got up on this morning. But God’s love … as shown to us by and through His Son, Jesus Christ … that love is nothing like our love for Him. If you have survived cancer … if you’ve lost a child or a loved one … if you’ve ever had your world turned upside down and inside out … then you know what Paul is talking about, amen?
Paul lists seven things – tribulation … distress … persecution … famine … nakedness … peril … and sword – that could have easily convinced him that God had turned His back on him … that God had abandoned him. What Paul discovered instead is that it was God’s love and God’s provision that carried him through all his trials and tribulations … that God can and will literally walk upon the water in the middle of a hurricane to come and rescue us, amen?
It would be very helpful if you would open your Bibles to Romans 8 and begin following along with me … starting with the first part of verse 35. What is the first challenge to our faith or belief in Christ’s love for us? “Trouble.” It may be translated as “hardship” or “tribulation” in your Bible. The most accurate translation of the Greek word would be “tribulation.” In the Greek, the word that Paul uses literally means “to be squeezed” … like something that you would squeeze in a vice. What happens when you put something in a vice and begin to squeeze it? You put pressure on it … and you keep putting pressure on it until something has to give … and it’s usually not the vice but your head that explodes, amen? What are the things or the situations in your life that can squeeze the love of God out of your life? Nothing. There is nothing, says Paul, that can break or destroy the love that God has for you.
Well, says Paul, what about “distress”? Can “distress” separate God’s love from us? The word that we translate as “distress” literally means “to be trapped” … such as in a narrow place. Distress means to give off stress … to show signs of stress … panic. Have you ever seen a wild animal in a cage? It freaks out. It runs around. It frantically tries to get out. It is panicked … stressing out. When life puts on the pressure … when we feel life closing in and we begin to freak out … to stress out … God doesn’t shake His head and walk away. He doesn’t throw up His hands in frustration. He doesn’t abandon us because of our lack of faith. We may give up on Him. We may abandon Him … but He will never give up on us or abandon us, amen? Will hardship or distress separate us from the love of God? Come on … what’s the answer? [Wait for everyone to say it.] That’s right … NO!
How about “persecution”? Will “persecution” separate us from the love of Christ? [Indicate that you want a response.] That’s right! The word that Paul uses for “persecution” means “to be chased” … “to be pursued.” Life’s problems not only squeeze you … they not only close in and stress you out … they also chase after you. “Blessed are those,” says Jesus, “who are persecuted” … who are chased down and attacked … “for righteousness sake” … for what they believe … “for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:10) … “for in the same way they chased down and attacked and killed the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:11-12; paraphrasing mine).
If anybody knows and has lived this truth it is the Apostle Paul. If you live a Godly life in Christ Jesus, you will face persecution. Like Paul, you will be chased down and attacked for you what you believe … but take heart, says Paul, no matter what kind of persecution you are facing … no matter what tribulation or hardship you receive because of what you believe … not matter how much stress life puts on you because of your faith in Jesus Christ … none of that can ever separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, amen? God already loves you but if you are being persecuted it is because you let the world know that you love God, amen?
Hardship cannot separate us from the love of God … distress cannot separate us from the love of God … persecution cannot separate us from the love of God. How about “famine”? Can “famine” separate us from the love of God? [Indicate that you are waiting for a response.] Ha! Paul would be proud of you!
“Famine” would certainly be a hardship, amen? I don’t know about you, but “famine” would certainly cause me to stress out … just a little bit. One of the ways that people can persecute you is to fire you or cause you to lose your income so that you can’t buy food. There are other ways in which the world tries to starve us out. It can slowly take away the things that feed our souls, our spirits … things like public prayer … taking away our voice in the public media and on social platforms. Silencing us, shouting us down, mocking us, persecuting us, separating us because they know that we need worship, we need other Christians in our life. What we have to remember is that it is not God who is doing this to us … it is the world … with its problems, with its prejudice and hatred for Christians that causes these things to happen and are not a sign that God is disappointed with us … that God no longer loves us … that God has turned His back on us and abandoned us. Even if the world has turned its back on us and abandoned us, God hasn’t and God never will, amen?
Hardship … distress … persecution … famine … how about “nakedness”? Can “nakedness” separate us from the love of Christ? Before you answer that question, we have to understand what Paul means when he asks us if “nakedness” can separate us from the love of Christ. He’s not talking about physical nudity … thank God … but the concept that he is speaking about kind of relates to physical nudity. In order to become naked, my clothing has to be taken away from me. The same can be said about poverty. Poverty is the result of someone taking everything away from you … your money, your food, your house, your belongings … leaving you naked … with nothing … with no way to cover yourself or protect yourself or take care of yourself. So, what Paul is asking is … [pause] … can poverty separate us from the love of God? [Wait … indicate that you are expecting an answer.]
Poverty … physical poverty … is something that Paul knew a lot about. He and his companions often had to rely on strangers for food and shelter or they had to do menial labor so that they could earn enough money to supply their most basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing. On more than one occasion, says Paul, they had to do without … without food, without shelter. Most of the time they had to wear rags. Even though the world looked down on Paul because he was so poor, Paul never had the sense that God was looking down on him or judging him for what he lacked … and the same goes for you and anyone who comes to our church. We don’t care if your pockets are empty. We don’t care about the cut or quality of your clothes. We don’t care if you went to a fancy college or dropped out of school in the third grade. We don’t care if you live in a mansion or a rescue mission. We don’t care about any of those things because God doesn’t care about any of those things. He loves you … He loves all of us … plain and simple with no strings attached, amen?
Let’s see … hardship … distress … persecution … famine … nakedness or poverty can’t separate us from the love of Christ and neither can “peril,” says Paul. As you may have guessed by now, the Greek word that Paul uses for “peril” has a unique meaning … it means “to be constantly in harm’s way.” Just like poor Ol’ Chippie … the parakeet who got sucked into a vacuum cleaner, drowned under the kitchen faucet, and blasted by a hair dryer … calamity can blindside us and come at us pretty fast … but it can also squeeze us like a vice, it can box us in, it can chase after us, it can take things away from us, and it can be relentless, amen? Again, when Paul says that peril cannot separate us from the love of Christ, he’s speaking from hard-won personal experience. Peril, you might say, was one of Paul’s constant companions. Peril persecuted Paul in that it chased after him. It followed him around. Wherever Paul went, “Peril” was never far behind. If you heard that Paul was in town, the first place that you’d go to look for Paul was where? The local synagogue … and if you didn’t find him there, chances are that you would find him in the local jail … if he hadn’t been run out of town first.
Even though “Peril” followed Paul wherever he went, guess Who or what else also followed him around wherever he went? That’s right … the love of Christ, amen?
Shall the “sword” separate us from the love of Christ? [Wait for their response.] No! Now … you may not know this but there are different kinds of swords. When Paul speaks about a sword, he is talking about the kind of “short sword” that assassins and executioners used … not the longer swords used by soldiers and gladiators in combat. The “gladis” or long swords that the gladiators and soldiers used were designed to hack and chop … the shorter swords used by assassins and executioners were used for more, shall we say, “precise” work. Sometimes life tries to hack and chop us to pieces … and sometimes it knows the perfect place to stick the blade, amen?
When Paul wrote this letter, he was sitting in a Roman prison awaiting his sentence. He was literally facing the executioner’s sword. And yet, he says, even when they separate his head from body, guess what? Not even that, says Paul, will separate him from the love of Christ. Life may try to hack away at Christ’s love for us … it may know exactly where to stick the blade … but it will never be able to separate us from the love of Christ, amen? Even though “we are being killed all day long” … even if we are “accounted as sheep to be slaughtered” (Romans 8:36) … Christ, who was accounted as a sheep and slaughtered, will come and take us to be with Him where we can love Him and He can love us forever, amen? Not even death, says Paul, can separate us from the love of Christ. It will, in fact, make it possible for us to be separated from the world and those we love but it will also make it possible for us to never be separated from Christ.
No matter what life throws at us … no matter how much life tries to squeeze us … break us … no matter how much life tries to trap us and box us in … no matter how much life tries to chase us down and destroy us … no matter what life tries to take from us, including our life … Paul says that we will always be what? Not just conquerors but more than conquerors! “Hypernicomen,” is what he actually calls us. “Nekopo” means “to overcome” … “to be victorious”. “Hyper” is a word that is familiar to all of us and means “above or beyond.” “Hypernicomen” means to “hyper-overcome” … to be “hyper” or super victorious!
Oh, my brothers and sisters … let me show you what Paul just did here. Not only does hardship and distress not mean that God has turned His back on us … not only does persecution or famine or nakedness not mean that God has forsaken us … not only does peril or sword not mean that God abandoned us … ready for this? Not only will God not abandon us or forsake us or turn His back on us because of these things … His love will not only give us the strength to persevere and the will and drive to survive but will give us a super victory over these things.
How can we persevere through hardship? How can we hold on during times of distress? How do we snatch victory from the jaws of persecution? How do we find hope when we’ve lost everything? How do we face life’s ultimate blow with courage? Because we are more than what? Conquerors! And we are conquerors … more than conquerors … not because of any power … not because of any strength or cunning or insight or skill on our part … but because of Him … because of Christ … who loves us, amen?
It is the power of God’s love that gives us the ability to walk though the challenges of life that might make us feel like our faith has deserted us … but that is why it so important to read God’s Word … to stay close to God’s people … so that when life comes at us full bore or puts the squeeze on us we can read Paul’s letter and remember that God loves us … and how He showed us how much He loved us by taking on flesh and facing everything … including death … that the world could throw at Him. In the midst of hardship and distress, persecution, famine, poverty, danger, and our possible demise, we can look up … we can look to His Word … and be reminded for the umpteenth time that nothing … absolutely, positively nothing … can separate us from His love, amen? I hope that you believe that because it’s true.
Paul says that we can take draw strength from God’s love … that we can be more than conquerors because of God’s love … and we can feel “safe” because of God’s love. “For I am convinced,” he writes, “that neither death nor life … neither angels nor demons … neither the present nor the future ... nor any powers … neither height nor depth … nor anything else in all creation … will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our LORD” (Romans 8:38-39).
Wow! What a list, amen? Paul says that he is “convinced” … “persuaded” … that none of these things can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our LORD. “Convinced” or “persuaded” is in the perfect tense, which means that an action has taken place and become permanent. In other words, what Paul is saying is that he has become convinced … persuaded … and will always be convinced and persuaded that none of things can separate him from the love of God and nothing will ever change his mind when it comes to the unwavering, steadfast love of God for him and for us.
Paul was not “convinced” or “persuaded” because he heard a great sermon on these truths. Paul was not basing his faith … not putting his trust … in these truths because he had a hunch or a feeling. Paul says that he is certain and that he will always remain certain because he’s been to hell and back and found that nothing …absolutely nothing … has been able to separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
It is also important to note that Paul uses the passive voice … “I am persuaded” … “I am convinced.” The “passive” voice means that an outside force has caused an action or reaction. Paul was not convinced or persuaded because of anything that he did. Paul was not persuaded or convinced of these truths by using his own reasoning or logic. He was persuaded, convinced that there was absolutely nothing that could separate him from the love of God because of what God did … because of his experience of God’s steadfast, unwavering love in every possible condition or situation. The facts spoke for themselves and they are what convinced or persuaded Paul of the truth of God’s love for him and, again, for us.
Paul is persuaded … absolutely convinced … that neither death nor life can or will separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus our LORD. Think about this … Paul wrote this while awaiting what could possibly be a death sentence … and it turned out to be a death sentence … but Paul is aware that as frightening as the prospect of death may be … it is not the end. As Jesus’ death and resurrection … as Jesus’ promises throughout the gospels assure us … death cannot and will not have the final say, amen?
To die, says Paul, is gain because we will leave these poor, failing bodies and gain new bodies, eternal bodies where we will be with Jesus in His Kingdom … a Kingdom without end … a Kingdom where we will never be separated from Jesus and, hence, never separated from His love. Nothing in life, as Paul has already pointed out, can separate us from the love of Christ, remember? Not hardship … not distress … not persecution … not famine … not nakedness or poverty … not peril … or the sword … and, in fact, once we have passed through life, these things no longer exist or have power. When we die, these things are behind us and can never hurt us or separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our LORD, understand? Nothing … from the moment we are born to the moment we die can separate us from the love of Christ.
Paul moves from the natural world to the supernatural world. He says that he is persuaded … absolutely convinced that angels do not have the power or the ability to separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus our LORD. What an odd thing to say. Why would angels want to separate us from the love of Christ? You have to remember that there are many different types of angels … some good … and some, like the ones that Paul is referring to here, are evil. You know the name of the most famous one … Lucifer! Angels like Lucifer may not kill us, but they can sure do a lot to make our lives difficult and stressful.
If you don’t believe me, just look around you. Turn on the TV … surf the Internet or YouTube. I am constantly amazed at how much the literature and the arts have been progressively praising and glorifying and legitimizing the satanic and demonic over the past couple of decades. How many shows on TV or cable or the streaming channels are about zombies and werewolves, witches and vampires … making them sympathetic and relatable characters who are pretty much like the boy or girl next door or who have powers and abilities that some of our young people today wish to acquire or emulate. I’ve seen Jesus, our LORD and Savior, mocked, and portrayed as a trickster, an ordinary guy hiding behind a myth, a womanizer … and worse … much, much worse … and I’m sure you have too. It’s getting harder and harder to avoid seeing and hearing such things anymore. For example, there is a series on Netflix called “Lucifer,” in which Lucifer, tired of always having to be the bad guy and bored with ruling the underworld, opens up a night club in Los Angeles where he uses his evil powers to help the police catch and torture the bad guys … thus turning his evil powers against evil and, by some weird default and twist of logic, that makes him some kind of evil good guy.
Paul’s words are comforting and encouraging. None of this … no angels of darkness … no power of the dark side … no demon from the reaches of hell … can separate us from the love of God. They may try to persuade us … to convince us … that God doesn’t really love us … that God has turned His back on us … that God has abandoned us … but it is all lies and we are to rebuke those thoughts and send them back to where they came from when we have them because we, like Paul, are persuaded … we, like Paul, are absolutely convinced … that not even superatural powers can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, amen?
Life and death … nothing in this world can separate us from the love of God. Nothing from the supernatural or the regions of hell can separate us from the love of God … and neither can time. Neither things present … that’s the here-and-now … nor things to come … that’s the future … can, says Paul, separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our LORD. In fact, if we look to our past we can clearly see that God was with us, that God was taking care us during those difficult times when we were absolutely convinced that our problems were the result of God withholding His love from us or turning His back on us or abandoning us. Standing in the present … looking back at our past … we can see how absolutely wrong and untrue those thoughts and feelings were … and that allows us to stand in this present moment and look forward knowing that nothing can or will separate us from the love of God in the future and that when we run into difficult times ahead … when we experience hardship and stress, persecution or poverty or peril … we are persuaded and absolutely convinced that nothing can stand against us when God is for us … and God is always for us, amen?
Listen to the way that Paul maps this out. Nothing in life or death … neither the rulers or the powers of this earth or the rulers and powers of hell … neither the past nor the present nor the future can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our LORD. And … just in case you don’t hear or see what Paul is doing … he ties it all together very nicely. Nothing in all creation … all creation … nothing in this world … nothing in hell … nothing in this life … nothing after this life … today, yesterday, or tomorrow … nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our LORD. When you have been through trouble and tribulation … when you’ve been through hardship and distress and pain … when you’ve been have been chased down and persecuted … when you have been through famine and poverty … when you have suffered the pain of loss … when you have faced the sword and death … then you know … absolutely … beyond a shadow of a doubt … that nothing … absolutely, positively nothing … can alter or destroy or disrupt or interfere with the flow of God’s love from His heart to ours! What a great and powerful truth to live by, amen?
Remember our poor little Vietnamese orphan girl? One day there was some excitement around the orphanage. An American couple had come to the orphanage looking to adopt a little boy. All of the boys in the orphanage were excited and did their best to make themselves presentable. When the American couple showed up, all the boys lined up to meet them. The couple just radiated love. It was obvious that whichever fortunate boy they picked that that child would be taken out of the misery of the orphanage and grow up in a nice, clean home filled with love and affection.
The couple met the boys and played with them … laughing and hugging them and getting to know them. The little girl knew that there was no way that they were going to choose her so she stood off to the side in a corner. Her heart ached as she watched the couple play with the boys, knowing that one of them was going to get to go home with them.
And then something happened … something amazing … something beautiful … something unexpected. Out of the corner of his eye, the husband saw the little girl standing alone in the corner watching and he got up and walked over to her … squatted down … and did something she had never experienced before … He took her face in his hands and looked her in the eye and said: “This is one! This is the child that we want.”
That little girl never forgot that moment. Filthy … dressed in dirty rags … lice in her hair … boils on her skin … rotten teeth … this strange, wonderful man got down on her level, touched her, and told her that she was the one that he had been looking for. “I chose you!” Such powerful words. “You are precious to me. I don’t care about all that other stuff. I accept you … I accept you just as you are.”
This is exactly how God loves us. He sees all the things about ourselves that we’re unhappy about … all our hurt and pain … He sees all the guilt and shame that’s all over us … He sees past all of that. He leans down, takes our face in His hands, and He says: “My child … there is absolutely nothing … nothing on earth … nothing in heaven … nothing in hell … nothing that you’ve done … nothing in all creation that can keep me from you. Nothing can ever separate you from me or my love … except for one thing! The only thing that can separate you from my love is if you decide to reject it … if you decide to turn your back on it.”
When that man squatted down and held that little girl’s dirty face between his hands and asked her if she wanted to go home with him, you know what she did? She spat in his face … she kicked him in the shin … and then ran away. Why in the world would she do something like that? Because she didn’t know how to handle it. All she had ever known were people who spat on her, who cursed her, who beat her … who called her “ugly alien devil” and turned their backs on her. And now, here was someone who wanted her … someone who was looking at her … not with eyes filled with disgust or hate or judgment … but with eyes filled with love and compassion … and she had no idea how react, to respond. She didn’t know how to accept love because it had never been offered to her before.
This is a true story. Praise God, the couple adopted her anyways. They brought her back to their home in America where they cared for her and loved her and raised her as their own. They gave her an education and today she has a family of her own.
This is the story of Romans 8:35-39. God loves you with a steadfast, everlasting love … a love so strong that nothing can separate you from it … a love so strong that you are safe in the midst of it. His love will see you through the darkest of night. The question you have to ask yourself today is … “Do I know that love? Have I accepted the gift of God’s love? Am I persuaded … absolutely convinced … that neither trouble nor hardship nor persecution nor famine nor nakedness or peril nor sword … neither death nor life … neither angels or rulers or powers of any kind … neither the present nor the past nor the future … neither height nor depth … nor anything in all creation … will be able to separate me from the love of God that in Christ Jesus our LORD.”
Brothers and sisters, I tell you that if I weren’t a Christian, I don’t know how I would ever be able to through the day with all this crazy stuff brewing around us. I would be discouraged … I would be overwhelmed … I would be dismayed and distressed … filled with despair … but I know … I have been persuaded, convinced ... that I am in the hands of a loving God. I cannot escape it … and I can never be separated from Him or His love … and if you don’t know God personally through a relationship with Jesus Christ, then I join with Paul in asking you to “get in the family.”
Life is hard … but when you know God … when you know … when you are persuaded, convinced … that His love for you is real … that it is unconditional … that it is eternal … then you will know as Paul knows … as I know … that there is nothing that can break that love or separate us from that love. And because of His steadfast, unconditional, eternal love for you, there is nothing that can prevail against it or separate us from it. Wherever you go, whatever you do, God’s amazing love will go with you … envelope you … encapsulate you … strengthen you … carry you … and give you hope and courage.
Maybe you’ve never said “yes” to God’s love before. I encourage you … right here, right now … to accept Jesus’ love for you for the first time. Picture His hands reaching out to you … picture Him taking your face between His nail-pierced hands … picture Him looking you in the eyes and saying: “I choose you. You are the one that I came for … you are the one I died for … you are the one that I love.”
Just say “yes” to Him. Don’t spit on Him. Don’t kick him in the shin … don’t run away … don’t be afraid. Just say “yes.”
If you are ready to accept Him … if you are ready to accept His love, then pray with me right now:
Lord … we want to say ‘yes’ to You today. Some of us watching this are saying ‘yes’ to You for the first time. We know that You will never reject us but we want to stop rejecting You. We choose You, God. We trust that You will take care of our past … that You will wipe the slate of our past clean and forget it. We trust that you will give us strength and hope and courage in our present day-to-day lives. We trust that You will prepare a place for us in Heaven … that our future is secure because we are saying ‘yes’ to You.
And God … as best as we know how … we want to follow You. Will You help us? Will You help us share Your love?
By the power and grace of our Triune God … Father, Son, and Holy Spirit … we pray. And would all who are persuaded and convinced that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our LORD make it so by saying … Amen!
