God is Mercy: Part 7 of Attributes of God

God’s Mercy

Mercy is a verb.  Mercy is an action word.  We don’t use the word mercy this way - but in bible times that is the meaning of the word.  God’s mercy is God’s goodness in action.

Mercy means to stoop down in kindness to someone who is inferior, someone small and in need of help.  Look at this picture of a dad helping his son.  The father comes down to the son’s level, and gives help.  God, our Father, comes down to our level to help us.  That is mercy!

Mercy means to have pity on someone and to act in a way that helps them.  Mercy includes the love needed to fix the problem.  God’s mercy means that He sees our problem and He cares about us so much that He takes action to help.  Mercy is not just feeling sorry for someone.  Mercy takes action!

Mark 6:34, 37  “When He went ashore He saw a great crowd, and He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.  And He began to teach them many things….  Give them something to eat.”

Jesus saw the crowd was confused and lost.  He pities them, He feels badly about their situation, and then He acts to fix the problem.  Jesus teaches them the truth that will give them hope and help.  Then, He tells the disciples to feed them too.  Jesus doesn’t leave us needing help.  He actually helps!

Psalm 34:17 “When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.”

God knows we need help.  He acts to help us.

God’s mercy didn’t come into being when man sinned.  Mercy is part of God’s infinite (no beginning and no ending) being.  God has always been merciful and will also be merciful.  God doesn’t change.

Lamentations 3:22-23  “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

Does God stop being merciful when a non-believer dies and goes to hell?

As humans we have a hard time understanding how God’s mercy never changes.  God is merciful, even as He judges sin.  

Ezekiel 33:11 says, “As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live”.

Every single person receives God’s mercy.  Since “the wages of sin is death”, we should all be dead immediately (or never even born!).  God’s mercy gives all men life on earth.  God is postponing His judgment of sin.  He is showing mercy in delaying judgment because “The Lord is... not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).  God is waiting.  That is mercy.  God hears our cries.  God sees our tears.  God knows our troubles and He acts to help us.  Mercy cannot cancel justice.  God is both completely merciful and completely just.  We may not understand how it works, but that is our limited ability to understand.  God is God.  There is no conflict between God being just and God being merciful.  Both are equally true and right in God.

How has God shown you mercy?

Getting to know God in relationship:

How will you talk to God differently and read His word differently because of this attribute?

Written by Wendy Wood, CHCC counselor

God is Righteous and Just: Part 6 of Attributes of God

God is righteous and just.

To say God is righteous is to say that God is always right.  It is God’s very nature to always be right.  He cannot be wrong.  He cannot do wrong.  God is righteous because He is the very definition of what it means to be right.  God’s righteousness means that He is just.  

Psalm 97:2 says “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne.”

God’s goodness and righteousness mean that God must be just.  A God who is perfectly right cannot tolerate sin and allow it to go unpunished.  Because God is good and right, sin must be punished.  A righteous God and a just God means that God does not ignore sin.   God’s goodness and rightness never change when God is just and punishes sin.  This is another area where humans are not able to understand God completely.  God’s anger and wrath toward sin do not change in any way His goodness and righteousness.  God is unchanging.  He is always good.  He is always just.  He is always loving.  God cannot be good and ignore sin.  Ignoring sin would not be justice.  God cannot be good and not just.  Goodness and justice exist together and God is always completely both.

Revelations 16:5 and 7 says, “Just are you, O Holy One, who is and who was, for you brought these judgments.”  And, “Yes, Lord God the Almighty, true and just are your judgments.”

When God looks at a sinner who loves his sin and rejects God, justice sentences that sinner to die and go to hell. This is right and good because God tells us that the wages of sin is death.   

When God looks at a sinner who has trusted in Christ’s death on the cross and trusts in God’s forgiveness, justice sentences that sinner to live eternally with God in heaven.  The sin has been dealt with justly because God put the sin on Jesus for us.  Jesus changes our condition from guilty to not guilty.  God is just in both condemning the unrepentant sinner and in saving the repentant sinner.

We, as people, have a hard time understanding the “fairness” of this.  We want murders to be punished for their sin.  We don’t want people who have hurt us to be forgiven because our sense of justice is very different from God’s righteousness and justice.  We have sinful minds and intentions.  God is perfectly right and perfectly just.  We need to trust that God is who He says He is and not allow our feelings of fairness to contradict God’s word.

In what circumstances are you tempted to think God has been unfair or unkind to you?

Put into your own words why rightness and justice must exist in God equally.

Isaiah 30:18  

“Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you,

   and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.

For the Lord is a God of justice;

   blessed are all those who wait for him.”

Deuteronomy 32:4

“The Rock, his work is perfect,

   for all his ways are justice.

A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,

   just and upright is he.”

Psalm 119:137

“Righteous are you, O Lord,

   and right are your rules.”

What do you learn about God’s righteousness and justice?

How does this change how you view the circumstances when it feels like God is not right or just?

Getting to know God in relationship:

How will you talk to God differently and read His word differently because of this attribute?

God is Good: Part 5 of Attributes of God

God is good.

“You are good and You do good” - Psalm 119:68

“Taste and see that the Lord is good” - Psalm 34:8

God is infinitely good.  There is no beginning to God’s goodness and there is no ending to His goodness.  There is no limit to God’s goodness.  God is always good.  It is God’s goodness that makes Him kind-hearted, gracious, and good-natured in all that He does.  God cannot stop being good.  God cannot be only mostly good at times.  God’s character is unchanging.  God cannot be indifferent toward anyone or anything.  God’s goodness means that He is always good in all His thoughts, in all His intentions, and in all His actions.  

God created us and saves us because of His goodness.  As sinners, we deserve nothing but death.  We could not earn the right to be born because we didn’t even exist!  Out of God’s goodness He gives us life.  We are born sinners in need of a Savior.  God gives us life because He is good and He delights to do good.  God’s saves us because He is good and He is full of kindness and grace.  We receive His blessing simply because He is good and He chooses to give it to us.

Deuteronomy 7:6-8 “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God.  The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession, out of all the people who are on the face of the earth.  It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery”

How has God been good to you?

A.W. Tozer says “Remember that you can answer every question with this expression: ‘God of His goodness willed it.  God out of His kindness willed it.”

Whatever happens to you, is out of God’s good character.  That does not mean that we feel like everything is good.  Some things will feel bad and hurt.  But, God has not stopped being good.  God is perfectly good at all times.  Because God is infinite, because God is immanent, because God is immense, He is able to use His goodness in ways we do not understand.  We must choose to trust God is who He says He is.  God declares Himself to be good.  Your feelings don’t change that fact.

Isaiah 63:7 says, “I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord, the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord has granted us, and the great goodness to the house of Israel that He has granted them according to His compassion, according to the abundance of His steadfast love.”

Psalm 100:5 says, “For the Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to all generations.”

When in your life have you doubted God’s goodness?

What has happened in your life that you don’t feel is good?

What does God’s word say about those situations?

Will you choose to trust God’s goodness?  Will you choose to say, “God allowed this situation because He is good and His intentions for me are good”?

Getting to know God in relationship:

How will you talk to God differently and read His word differently because of this attribute?

God is Immense: part 4 of Attributes of God

God is immense.

God is bigger than you can ever imagine.  

Isaiah 40:12 says “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?”  

Have you ever been to the ocean?  Can you picture a God so big that He can measure all of the oceans in His cupped hands?  

Look at the mountains that surround our state.  Look at just Mount Rainier.  Think about God being so big that He can pick up Mount Rainier and put it on a scale.  Think about that!  That is a BIG God!

Think about the size of the universe.  The Milky Way galaxy that we live in on Earth is 100,000 light years long.  One light year is 6,000,000,000 miles long, and the galaxy is 100,000 times that!!   The closest star to the Earth, the Sun, is 92.96 millions miles away from the Earth.   The galaxy closest to us is the Andromeda Galaxy and it is 2,000,000 light years away.  The Hubble Telescope estimates that there are 100,000,000,000 galaxies and our technology has not allowed us to see all of what really exists beyond those.  Scientists believe that is just the beginning of what galaxies really exist!  

Stop and watch this youtube video on the galaxy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVsqCLyoU3o&t=2s

Psalm 104:1-3 says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul!  O Lord, my God, You are very great!  You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering Yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent.  He lays the beams of His chambers on the waters; He makes the clouds His chariot;  He rides on the wings of the wind.”

Stop and think about how big God must be to create and control and hold all the stars, moons, planets, comets, all the galaxies, together.  He keeps them in their places and always, at all times, is holding them together.  Scientists estimate that there are at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.  

Psalm 147:4 says “He determines the numbers of the stars; He gives to all of them their names”.  

Remember, the sun is the closest star to Earth.  Earth could fit into the sun 1,300,000, times.  And God has placed 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars (at least!) in the sky one by one and calls them by name.  

Stop and think about that.  God brings the stars out one by one.  He knows every single star by name.  

That is an immense God!

Think about how huge God is!  What does that mean to you?

This same huge, immense God is also immanent.  He is with you!

In Romans 8:31 Paul asks the question, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

Answer that question for yourself.  How does God’s immensity and immanence matter to you?
 

Getting to know God in relationship:

How will you talk to God differently and read His word differently because of this attribute?

Written by Wendy Wood, CHCC counselor

God is Immanent - part 3 of Attributes of God

God is immanent

Immanent means to permanently live and remain in something.  God’s immanence means that He is everywhere, all at the same time.  God does not have to travel to be with us.  He is right here, wherever you happen to be.  Another way to think about God’s immanence is to say He is present at all times, in all places.  

Psalm 139:8-10  says, “If I ascend to heaven, you are there!  If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!  If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.”  

You don’t ever need to pray “God, be with me”.  He is always with you!

Do you ever “feel” like God is not with you?

Whether or not you “feel” God’s presence does not change the fact that God is always with you.  He is immanent!  He is above all things, beneath all things, inside all things, outside all things.  God is not confined in any way.  He keeps all things together at all times through His constant presence.  God even gave Himself the name “Emmanuel”.  “Emmanuel” means “God with us!”

How can God’s immanence (His being with you all the time) bring you comfort?

How can God’s immanence (His being with you all the time) increase your love for Him?

Getting to know God in relationship:

How will you talk to God differently and read His word differently because of this attribute?

Written by Wendy Wood, CHCC counselor

God is Infinite: part 2 of the Attributes of God

God is infinite.

We humans are finite.  That means we have a beginning and an end to our lives here on earth.  We are limited in our understanding of things.  For example, we don’t fully understand cancer and how it begins or how we can cure it.   We are limited in power and limited in our ability to make what we want happen.  For example, just because we want a million dollars, we can’t just make that happen because we say we want it.  We are limited by time and space.  We are only in one place at one time. You can’t play soccer with one friend at the same time that you have ice cream with another friend.  You have to choose one place to be at a time.  We have a limited amount of resources.  We have to choose how to spend our money and our time because we have a limited amount of both.

But, God is infinite.  He has no beginning and will never end.  “God has no bounds.  Whatever God is and all that God is, He is without limit.” God has no limit to His knowledge and wisdom.  There is absolutely nothing that confuses or stumps God.   God is not limited by time and space.  God is everywhere - past, present, and future - in all places, at all times.  Everything on earth, everything in heaven, everything everywhere is God’s, and He could create more at any time.  When God said, “Let there be light”, it appeared because He is infinite in power.   He has no limit to His resources. Look at this symbol below.  This is what math people use for infinity.  Where is the beginning of this shape?  Where does it end?  This symbol stands for infinity because there is no beginning or end, you can trace it over and over and never reach an ending.  That is how God is.  He has no beginning and no end.  There is no beginning or end to any of God’s attributes.

We simply cannot understand fully what God’s infinitude means because we are not infinite.  

But, we should spend time thinking deeply about this attribute of God and what it means to us.  God has revealed this attribute of Himself for His glory (so we will think highly of Him) and our benefit.  Everything about God is without limits.  God’s mercy is infinite.  God’s grace is infinite.  God’s love is infinite.  How does God’s infinitude impact our lives?  How can we rest in God’s character of His being absolutely limitless?  How can God’s infinitude lead to trusting Him more?

Consider these verses.

Romans 11:33-36  “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!  For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?  Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid?  For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.  To Him be glory forever.  Amen”.

Psalm 50:10-12  “For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.  I know all the birds of the hills and all that moves in the field is mine.  If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine and its fullness are mine.”

Psalm 90:2  “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

Revelation 1:8 . “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

While we cannot understand completely a Being who is so unlike us in this aspect, we can marvel at the wonderful God who is infinite.  

How is God’s infinite nature a reason to be joyful?  

Getting to know God in relationship:

How will you talk to God differently and read His word differently because of this attribute?

Written by Wendy Wood, CHCC counselor

Attributes of God

Over the next couple of weeks, this blog will feature a study of God.  Each day you will be reminded of an attributes of God and how understanding that attribute can change your relationship with God.

Introduction to the attributes of God study:

If someone asked you to describe God, what would you say?

Can you describe God as well as you can describe your best friend?

God sent Jesus to live on earth the be the perfect sacrifice for our sins so that we could be in a relationship with God.  God invites us to get to know Him in a deep and personal way.

What do you know about the President of the United States?  Do you know his name?  Do you know where he lives?  Do you know his wife’s name?  Do you know something about his personality?

You probably know something about the President, but you don’t know Him personally.  He wouldn’t invite you to his house or call you on the phone and ask for you by name.  You know about him, but you don’t have a relationship with him.

A relationship definitely involves getting to know stuff about a person, but it is more than that.  It is not just having facts about someone, though that is a part of it.  A relationship is deeper connection where you share your thoughts and struggles, and you depend on and trust the other person.  

You get to know someone by asking them questions, spending time with them, watching what things they like to eat, drink, and do.  You ask questions and listen to how the person talks.  You want to know what is important to the other person and begin to understand how they think. Getting to know someone takes time and effort.  It takes time to trust a new friend.  It takes time to understand how they think and to get to know how they will respond in certain situations.

To get to know God, to have a relationship with Him, takes time.  You need to spend time getting to know what God is like.  You need to understand more about His character, what He likes and dislikes.  As you spend time getting to know the attributes of God, you learn more of what He values and what is important to Him.  You begin to see that He is very different from humans, but still invites us to be His friend.  It takes time and energy to know God and to build a relationship with Him.

Have you ever had a friend that talked too much?  You felt like you never got to speak and had to listen to them talk about themselves all the time?  A good relationship is a conversation.  You take turns talking and listening.  You get to know each other, it is not just one sided.  Both people get to know one another.

The same is true of our relationship with God.  We can talk to God in prayer and tell Him about what we are dealing with (even though He already knows!) and ask for His help.  But if our relationship with Him is one-sided, it’s not a healthy relationship.  We equally need to listen to God and hear what He has to say.  God speaks to us through His word, the Bible.  He reveals all about who He is and what He likes and dislikes.  God reveals His purpose for giving us life and how to live a life that pleases Him.  As we get to know God more and more, our lives should be changing and becoming more and more like Christ.  That’s the evidence of being in a relationship with God.

We can know a lot about God, like the President of the United States, but still not have a relationship with Him.  We need to spend time hearing from God in His word, and talking to Him sharing our struggles and joys with Him.  He calls us His friends if we have trusted in Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

The following attributes of God are designed to help you get to know God better and to begin to build a relationship with Him.  As you read about God, talk to Him about Him.  Praise Him for how great He is and ask Him to help you live in a way that shows you trust that everything God says about Himself is true.

Written by Wendy Wood, CHCC counselor

How Big Is Your God?

Article posted on DesiringGod.org

During car rides throughout the pines of East Texas, our daughter often observes her surroundings and asks big questions about God.

“Is God bigger than that tree, mama?”

“What about the road? Is he longer than that?”

Outside of the obvious difficulty in answering such massive questions, my heart smiles at her curiosity — mostly because it makes me quiver to consider the magnitude of a God who cannot be measured by any of our pitiful metrics.

It is a good and humbling thing to observe who God is in comparison to who we are. The heart-dropping ingloriousness of our sin in relation to God’s holiness is as a rotten, puny tree stump beside General Sherman, the giant sequoia holding the title as the largest individual living stem in the world. Your stomach drops at its vastness. You cannot wrap your mind around how something this gargantuan exists.

The insurmountable nature of God can be for us a source of peace and joy. We have this butterflies-in-the-stomach effect as we approach the Lord, unable to fully see his providence, yet catching it in glimpses through dimmed eyes.

None Like Him

God is the knower of thoughts, seeker of hearts, knowing the measure of our days, yet standing outside of time, ordaining every second before there was even one (Psalm 139). We may say God is “omnipotent,” but applying the label doesn’t help our minds get around him, even as children of God. We can’t size him up. Our mental arms can’t wrap around this cosmos-creating, secret-having God (Deuteronomy 29:29).

Consistently throughout Scripture, we have the question arising, Who is like the Lord? After God parted the Red Sea for Israel, Moses erupts into praise and leads the people with the words, “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (Exodus 15:11).

After prophesying exile, Isaiah’s pronouncements shift upward in hope as he proclaims comfort for God’s people: “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in” (Isaiah 40:22). The Old Testament continues with accounts of God’s otherness from his creation.

There is no one like him.

The New Testament deepens our understanding of his distinctness. When the crowds pressed in on Jesus during his preaching and left not even a spot at the door, four men lowered their paralytic friend down through the roof, and Jesus’s initial response to their faith was to forgive the disabled man’s sins. We get a glimpse into the evil hearts of the scribes as they question Jesus’s authority wondering, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7).

It baffles the senses of the natural man to encounter the otherness of God made manifest through Jesus Christ.

Reaching into the Unfathomable

If you browse pictures of General Sherman, you will see many pictures of people standing at its base, appearing as grasshoppers in comparison.

All the trees in our neighborhood are mountable, which is good news for our (soon-to-be) three boys. There’s something about bear-hugging the base of a tree and attempting to climb it that allures our sons, our oldest especially. He is scratching at the bark to mount it. I think fear might fill him, though, if we were to drive to upstate California and show him General Sherman.

Yet here we are, full access to God through his word and power (Ephesians 1:17–19). This insurmountable, unfathomable, incalculable God reveals himself to children, calling forth praise even from infants (Matthew 21:15–16). We can “know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3), not because our minds have ascended the infinite, but because God in his infinitude accommodates our lowliness. We have Christ’s righteousness, grace upon grace, and the fulfillment of countless promises, not because of our works, but all because of our big God’s lavish grace. What have we not to be joyful for?

God’s grace cannot be weighed (1 Peter 1:10–12). His power cannot be measured (Ephesians 1:19). And it is given to us — sinners against the insurmountable God — by grace.

We Have God

No one is like him. No, not one. We can shudder at the magnitude of that reality and glorify him through overflowing thanksgiving and joy at such an immeasurable gift. Yet in our shuddering, we embrace him as our dearest Friend, closest Confidant, and Bridegroom. It is the greatest, kindest, and richest thing we could ever experience — because we were made for it.

Weak little grass shoots tossed by the wind next to the largest single Stem there is. We have God. That is a reality that we base our entire lives upon.

Psalm 118 A Remedy for the Fear of Man

Psalm 118:1-4

“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good;

His love endures forever.

Let Israel say:

“His love endures forever.”

Let the house of Aaron say:

“His love endures forever.”

Let those who fear the Lord say:

“His love endures forever.”

Think about the amazing gift of God’s love.  It is not His rejection and wrath that last forever. When God looks at His children, those who have trusted in Christ as their Lord and Savior, He sees us clothed in Christ’s holiness and righteousness.  When we are in Christ, when we are united in Him by faith, God loves us like He loves His own Son.

His love endures forever.  (Not the love of friends or those who we try so desperately to get approval from.  Only His love is forever.)

His love endures forever.  (God’s love will never change.  There is nothing we can do to make God love us more.  And there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.  God’s love is about Him, not us!)

His love endures forever.  (God’s love doesn’t change.  God’s love is not based on our performance or anything we do or don’t do.  God’s love is about what Christ has already done on the cross.)

His love endures forever.  (It is possible to lose the love of friends, parents, spouses, boyfriends and girlfriends, but God’s love will never end.  It is forever!)

Are you resting in the love of God or are you chasing after a lesser love from other people?

Adapted from a booklet by Amy Baker

24 Things Love Is.....

Article by Paul David Tripp

What is love?

You won't find the best answer on the pages of Wikipedia, Merriam-Webster or Shakespeare. No, the best definition of love was established at an event, the most important event in human history: the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ's sacrifice of love is the ultimate example of what love is and what love does. Here's a definition I like to use:

Love is willing self-sacrifice for the good of another that does not require reciprocation or that the person being loved is deserving.

If we are followers of Jesus Christ and believe in the cross for salvation, then our words and actions and responses must be motivated by cruciform love. That is, love that shapes itself to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ (cruci = "cross" and form = "in the shape of").

On this Valentine's Day, here are 23 more ways that you can express cruciform love in your daily living.

1. LOVE IS being willing to have your life complicated by the needs and struggles of others without impatience or anger.

2. LOVE IS actively fighting the temptation to be critical and judgmental toward another while looking for ways to encourage and praise.

3. LOVE IS making a daily commitment to resist the needless moments of conflict that come from pointing out and responding to minor offenses.

4. LOVE IS being lovingly honest and humbly approachable in times of misunderstanding.

5. LOVE IS being more committed to unity and understanding than you are to winning, accusing, or being right.

6. LOVE IS a making a daily commitment to admit your sin, weakness, and failure and to resist the temptation to offer an excuse or shift the blame.

7. LOVE IS being willing, when confronted by another, to examine your heart rather than rising to your defense or shifting the focus.

8. LOVE IS making a daily commitment to grow in love so that the love you offer to another is increasingly selfless, mature, and patient.

9. LOVE IS being unwilling to do what is wrong when you have been wronged, but looking for concrete and specific ways to overcome evil with good.

10. LOVE IS being a good student of another, looking for their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs so that in some way you can remove the burden, support them as they carry it, or encourage them along the way.

11. LOVE IS being willing to invest the time necessary to discuss, examine, and understand the relational problems you face, staying on task until the problem is removed or you have agreed upon a strategy of response.

12. LOVE IS being willing to always ask for forgiveness and always being committed to grant forgiveness when it is requested.

13. LOVE IS recognizing the high value of trust in a relationship and being faithful to your promises and true to your word.

14. LOVE IS speaking kindly and gently, even in moments of disagreement, refusing to attack the other person’s character or assault their intelligence.

15. LOVE IS being unwilling to flatter, lie, manipulate, or deceive in any way in order to co-opt the other person into giving you what you want or doing something your way.

16. LOVE IS being unwilling to ask another person to be the source of your identity, meaning, and purpose, or inner sense of well-being, while refusing to be the source of theirs.

17. LOVE IS the willingness to have less free time, less sleep, and a busier schedule in order to be faithful to what God has called you to be and to do as a spouse, parent, neighbor, etc.

18. LOVE IS a commitment to say no to selfish instincts and to do everything that is within your ability to promote real unity, functional understanding, and active love in your relationships.

19. LOVE IS staying faithful to your commitment to treat another with appreciation, respect, and grace, even in moments when the other person doesn’t seem deserving or is unwilling to reciprocate.

20. LOVE IS the willingness to make regular and costly sacrifices for the sake of a relationship without asking for anything in return or using your sacrifices to place the other person in your debt.

21. LOVE IS being unwilling to make any personal decision or choice that would harm a relationship, hurt the other person, or weaken the bond of trust between you.

22. LOVE IS refusing to be self-focused or demanding, but instead looking for specific ways to serve, support, and encourage, even when you are busy or tired.

23. LOVE IS daily admitting to yourself, the other person, and God that you are unable to be driven by a cruciform love without God’s protecting, providing, forgiving, rescuing, and delivering grace.

God bless

Paul David Tripp (originally posted on PaulDavidTripp.com

Reflection Questions

1. For more on cruciform love, spend time reading, and meditating on, 1 John 4:7-21.
2. Print this list out or save it to your phone and revisit it, asking the Lord to show you where you can grow in cruciform love.