Nothing New.

When I write these posts, I have a couple of goals in mind. One is to communicate truth, and only truth, to the best of my ability. I never want to lead someone down the wrong path.

Another goal is to write something useful. I don’t want to waste your time. I want you to walk away with something important to think about; something that will have a real, positive impact on your life.

These are good goals, but the second one sometimes trips me up. It subtly morphs into, “I want to write something new / innovative / flashy / profound / exciting!” My ego whispers, “unless what you have to say is new and brilliant, it’s not worth saying.“

I was recently reading C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, and the following passage really spoke to me on this issue:

“The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see; like bringing a horse back and back to the fence it has refused to jump or bringing a child back and back to the bit in its lesson that it wants to shirk.”

Mere Christianity; Book 3, Chapter 3

I realized I needn’t worry about writing anything new or original. It is worthwhile to revisit those old, simple principles that we so easily forget; those truths that we need to be reminded of, over and over again.

True love.

So, today, allow me to remind you of this: God loves you.

It blows my mind that God, Creator of all things, cares about us. In the scope of creation, what are we but specks of dust? Yet, the Bible makes it clear that God loves mankind, and not just mankind as a whole, but individuals, including you and me.

His love is not based on who we are (for we are truly wretched creatures), but on who He is. So great is His love for us that He became flesh, lived a sinless life, and took the punishment we deserve onto Himself, providing the way for us to be forgiven and redeemed.

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

Romans 5:8

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

John 3:16

This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

I John 4:10

We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.

I John 4:16

No matter what you’ve done, no matter where you are in life, God loves you. If you call out to Him, He will save you from your sin… because He loves you. He will make you into a new creature, and He will carry you through life’s difficulties… because He loves you.

The fact that God loves you may be nothing new, but it’s definitely a truth worth revisiting over, and over again.