The Inseparable Love of God (1) [ Romans 8:38-39 ] Why can nothing separate us from the love of God? 1. Because God’s love is eternal. Romans 8:29a says: “For those whom He foreknew…” The word “foreknew” refers to before eternity began —before the creation of heaven and earth . The phrase “those whom He foreknew” does not simply mean knowing about someone intellectually, but rather loving them. In other words, it refers to “those whom God loved from eternity past.” Amos 3:2a says: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth.” If “known” merely meant intellectual knowledge, that would imply that God only knew Israel and did not know the other nations—which cannot be true, because the all-knowing God lacks knowledge of nothing. Therefore, “I have known you only” means “I have loved you only.” God loved Israel among all the nations of the earth. Hosea 13:5 says: “I knew you in the wilderness , in the land of great drought.” The “wilderness” was where the Israelite...
All God’s breakers
“For You had cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current engulfed me All Your breakers and billows passed over me” (Jonah 2:3).
There are too many people who break the family. Many husbands are breaking their families and many wives are breaking their families as well. Even their children are breaking their families. Many parents and parents-in-laws are breaking their families as well. It seems like everyone is breaking the family. Everyone is breaking the peace of the home. The spiritual family, the church is same. There are too many people who are breaking the church. Not only the pastors are breaking the church but also the elders are breaking the church as well. Now even the wives of the elders are starting to break the church from behind. Furthermore, now even the deacons are getting up and breaking the church. There are too many people who are breaking the peace of the church. It seems that there are so many people around us who are breaking the church unity. Obviously, the Lord wants Lord. We are disobeying the Lord's command. We are more and more destroying than building. We are destroying our families and even the Lord’s churches. Although we must become the peacemakers, we are becoming the peace-breakers. What would Jesus do to us, the breakers, who disobey the Lord's command? The Lord sends the waves of life to break our harden hearts of the disobedient.
In Jonah 2:3, Jonah prayed to God in the stomach of the great fish, saying that “You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.” Here, the “breakers” are the waves that break themselves (Park Yun-sun). The Creator God was breaking Jonah's harden heart by using his tools such as, the great wind, the great storm, the Gentile captain and the sailors. As a result, Jonah prayed in the stomach of the great fish while looking at God because of his broken heart due to the great wave of the Lord. Jonah, who had fallen asleep at the below deck of the ship and didn’t even pray to God when the ship was about to break up, was broken by the great wind that God had sent to him. As a result, he finally prayed to God in the stomach of the great fish. The Lord broke Jonah’s harden heart so that he could pray to God. In other words, only those whom the Lord breaks look to Him and pray humbly.
We are breaking the families and the churches. Although it is obvious that God wants to build His church and our families, we are disobeying God's command to build His church and our families. Thus, God is now breaking the heart of those who disobey, those who break the peace of the church and the family. He does so in order to build us up as peacemakers, not peace-breakers. God even use such disobedient servants like us to proclaim the Word of God to such sinners like Ninevites so that they can repent their sins and reconciled not only with God but also with each other. In order to faithfully bear this ministry of reconciliation and of making peace, we must become more and more broken. I hope and pray that our harden hearts will be broken so that we may humbly cry out to God and obey God’s command even through it will be painful when the great waves of the Lord will come into our lives.
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