Monday Morning Devotion-November 23, 2015
If God Had a Refrigerator…
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. 1 John 4:16
*Had a number of comments about our refrigerator's problems. And, no it isn't fixed yet. Still have the noise, but the fruit is no longer freezing. Anyway that called to mind a devotion from 2006 about God's refrigerator. Which still has relevance nine years later.
Monday Morning Devotion-May 29, 2006
If God had a refrigerator your picture would be on it!
If He had a wallet He would carry your picture in it!
Okay so that sounds a little hokey. I won't say which preacher I got those from, but I like them. What they say in a simplistic, kind of silly way, is God really loves you. That is the most comforting thought I can wake up with everyday.
Sometimes that idea is hard to grasp. How could the Creator of the universe really think of me as special? There are millions and millions of people in the world. Why would I be special?
When you consider that you are the only person like you in the universe then God's special love for you becomes more understandable. He loved you so much that he only made one of you. While other people may have some of the same personality traits you have there is no one who is exactly like you.
Even identical twins have differences. Each has his or her on physical attributes. They don't share a heart, a brain or a body. They may look alike, act alike, even appear to think alike, but there are some things that are different. Each of the twins is his or her own person. God has a plan for each of them individually. The plan may incorporate a dual effort on some things, but each one has to do his or her part.
Philip Yancey tells the story of Mark Van Doren, a literature professor who once visited his former student Thomas Merton in a Kentucky monastery. The fact that Merton was there was a surprise because he had been pretty much a party animal before.
Merton looked a little older, but Van Doren discovered, in the course of the conversation he was the same as before. He said, "Tom, you haven't changed at all."
"Why would I?" he replied. "Here our duty is to be more ourselves, not less."
That's something to think about. Yancey says, "…God has a similar goal for all of us, that we become more ourselves by realizing the "selves" God originally intended for us." (Reaching for the Invisible God, page 163).
If we are unhappy with what's going on in our lives then it is probably because we are not really being the "self" God created us to be. Perhaps it is time to make a personal or a personality assessment. Are we comfortable that what we are doing is what God wants us to do?
"There is an old story about a man desperate for a job, who responds to a want ad at the zoo. The warden explains that their gorilla has died; they can't afford a new one, so they'll pay this man to dress up like one. He balks at first, but needing the money badly he finally agrees."
"Each day he gets a little more enthusiastic in his cage. One day he swings on a vine so hard he ends up in the cage next door: the lion's cage. Feeling the lion's hot breath on his face he forgets his disguise and begins to scream for help. At which point the lion says, 'Shut up, you idiot, or we''ll both lose our jobs." (Love Beyond Reason, John Ortberg, page 66).
Sometimes we are like that man in the gorilla suit. For some kind of temporary reward we forget who we really are and pretend to be something we aren't. We are not being the "self" God called us to be. That's a good time to step outside that gorilla suit and try to look objectively at the things in life that are driving us. If I'm standing over here looking at Jim, what does his life look like? How's it going? Is he acting like a big monkey or is he doing what God intends and wants him to do?
Okay, so maybe our lives need a little work. The good news is what John tells us in today's scripture. "And so we know and rely on the love God has for us." God's love is always there. It doesn't change or vary depending on how good or bad we are doing in following the master plan.
John tells us more in the latter part of verse 16 and verses 17 and 18. "God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the dayof judgment, because in this world we are like him."
Whoa, what does that mean, "to live in love?" Here's what the Quest Study Bible says, "Such a concept is hard for us to understand, just as it must have been for John's readers. It's easiest and it's natural to organize our lives around our own selfish desires. To break that way of thinking is difficult. Jesus, however, was an example of a life that lived and breathed love. He gave himself and calls us to do the same."
Oh, I see. We are to be just like Jesus. Is that all? That's easy. Wrong! That's hard. Let me revise that "it's impossible!" But, God knows that. As Max Lucado says in his book "Just like Jesus." "God loves you just the way you are, but He refuses to leave you that way. He wants you to be just like Jesus."
So, what all this is saying is that we are to keep working on it. We can never achieve perfection, but we can get closer to it today than we were yesterday and we can get even closer tomorrow than we are today. And God will help us because He loves us and wants the best for us.
What pleases God is the effort. And the harder we try to get our lives on the right track the more He will help us. After all if God had a refrigerator your picture would be on it. His love will help you to be the "self" He intended you to be in the beginning.
Prayer: Lord thank you for your incredible love. It picks us up and dusts us off when we are down and accelerates our accomplishments when we get back on track. Among all things, of this we are certain, that we can rely on your love.
***author's note: Have a great week and be kind to your refrigerator. :)