AMAZING GRACE

Out of This World Crazy Love

We have talked trades before.  What is the biggest thing you have traded before?  Was it worth it?  We like to trade stuff for better stuff.  Or we just want something different.  I wouldn’t mind trading cars when I pull up next to a Porsche 911.  That has always been my dream car.  Oh well, the 2001 Acura will have to do for now!

 

What about if you were a professional ball player and you were traded?  How would that make you feel?  Would you compare yourself to the one you were traded for?  Or if you were a baseball player and traded for cash, what would that feel like?  Sorta weird I think.  I guess I will not have to worry about that happening to me.

 

2 Corinthians 5:21 talks about the trade God made for us.  “God made him (Jesus) who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  Jesus actually became sin for me.  That I could have a right relationship with Him.

 

So with a professional team, their motivation for trades is to make their team better.  When we trade stuff, we want to improve what we have.  But what in the world is God’s motivation in making this trade for us?

 

God backs up his crazy love for you.  Believe it.

 

Pray:  “God, you are amazing!  Show me why you make this sacrifice of your son, this trade for me.  Help it to sink deep into my heart.”

 

Grab Your Bible:  Romans 5:8 & John 3:16.

 

 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

 

For this is how God loved the world: He gave^[a] his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

 

God is crazy, head-over-heels in love with you.  Do you know I how I know, He sent His Son to endure ridicule and cruel punishment on the cross and die FOR your sin and mine.  That does not make sense.  It does not add up.  I cannot comprehend that.  It is crazy, unbelievable love.  BUT IT IS TRUE.

 

And you know Jesus proved it when he walked the earth.  If you look at the people who followed Jesus, it was the people who were nothing like Jesus that liked Jesus (Andy Stanley).  And Jesus like people who were nothing like Him.  I mean, the tax-collectors, prostitutes, the poor, the looked-down upon, the abandoned, the outcasts.  These are the ones we are quick to ignore or overlook, but Jesus made friends with them and loved them.  Jesus lived out God’s love for you and me by the way He loved people when He walked the earth.

 

The motivation for this grace thing:  God’s Gigantic Love For You!!!

 

God backs up his crazy love for you.  Believe it.

 

Prayer:  God, thank you for loving me even on my most unlovable days.