Life will remain primarily a mystery and a frustration
until you understand the heart and goals
of the God who is ultimately in control
of everything that touches your life.
God loves you because he loves you.
He loves you, not for what you can do for him,
but for what he can do for you.
You are of infinite worth
to the One who gave his all
that you might spend eternity with him.
The mind-boggling intensity of God’s love is as close and as crucial as the oxygen you breathe. Despite this, we tend to drift into regarding the infinite love of God as if it had the practical relevance of the countless grains of sand in a desert we have never seen. Let's bring our thinking down from the clouds to hard reality. The fact of divine love makes the happiness of Almighty God forever dependent upon your happiness. If you hurt, God hurts.
When pondering God’s plans for us, we tend to zero in on our role in God’s labor force. But although the Almighty has every right to treat you as his worker, the God of love chooses to be not your Boss, but your Mommy/ Daddy. And as the best imaginable Parent, the Lord is devoted to your welfare. Foremost to him is your fulfillment and development. The Lord has ministry plans for you, but they are for your sake, not for his gain (God, after all, is totally self-sufficient). And any tasks he lovingly allocates are just a fraction of his overall dreams for you.
Anything God asks you to do is because it is in your very best interest. God’s blueprint for your life focuses on your endless happiness and fulfillment. This is not to be confused with short term ease and bliss that ultimately wears thin and crumbles. Like little children who think happiness means having no rules and an endless supply of candy, we still have a lot of growing up to do before we understand what is truly in our best interest. Much of what we presently clamor for we will eventually discover is not what we really want after all. In contrast, the infinite knowledge and intelligence of God focuses on things we will be eternally thrilled about. That often puts our priorities at odds with God’s priorities, even though both he and us seek our happiness.
Some people who haven’t thought it through imagine God is egocentric because he asks us to praise and worship him. What we hold highest in life sets the ceiling for personal growth, achievement and honor. And being preoccupied with oneself makes one’s personality shrivel. That’s why our loving Lord wants you to be God-centered. The Lord’s only wish is that we act as wisely and unselfishly as him. Like the Perfect Leader that he is, he asks nothing of us that he would not do himself. It is the very nature of love – and hence the nature of God – to focus on the beloved. Just as he wants you to be God-centered, his plans focus on you as if you were the center of the universe.
Your love means infinitely more to God than all the diamonds in myriads of galaxies. And praise is a natural expression of love. Lovers find praises effortlessly flowing from their lips as they praise their beloved’s looks, abilities, and so on.
If God wanted slaves he could in an instant create too many to cram on to every planet in the universe. The All-powerful, Self-Sufficient Lord of the Universe craves your praise only because he is love and is rapt in you.
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