it's jess!

Unconditional love proves the Gospel. The world has no idea what unconditional love is except when God sends his son and he shows us what unconditional love is. He loves us so much that we don’t have to prove anything to Him, no matter what wrongs we have done. He is waiting there for us with open arms and a loving, merciful heart. I mean He sent his completely innocent ONLY son to the cross to save us from the punishment that we all deserved. How crazy is that?! Until we know His unconditional love for us, we cannot even begin to understand what it means to love others unconditionally. This means that we need to go out and start finding what God’s love for us looks like then go out and do exactly what he does for us for others. 

For me personally, I always think of children when I think of unconditional love. When kids are little they have no idea that their parents or anyone is imperfect. So they just love them automatically. When they see someone who is sick they have this innate longing to help that person without even thinking about it, even if their version of helping means drawing them a picture or just saying i love you. So why is it as we all get older we have this tendency to stop that, where all of the sudden people have to earn our love? We start thinking things like “well if only they did this for me” or “why couldn’t they live up to this expectation”. God has NEVER had thoughts like this about us. He simply wants us to come to Him as we are, with our messy, crazy lives. He just wants us to see how much He cares and loves each and everyone of us. Then once we see that or get a glimpse of that, share it with others. 

Here is the part that I think we as Christians get a bad wrap, we think that we have to go out and preach the gospel to people by thumping them with bibles and telling people that they are living all wrong and that they need to change (which maybe they do need to change) but this is all wrong!!! We need to first love them unconditionally. We need to first dry tears of sadness, give a hug, buy someone a coffee, have a regular conversation with someone no one talks to, welcome those who are normally unwelcome by others. God asks us to be a light on a hill shining for all to see. Why would you hide this amazing love? Wouldn’t you want to run out showing everyone this amazing feeling that you are experiencing? 

I always think of it as how we feel when we get into a new relationship, you have this urge to change your relationship status on Facebook or call your best friends, or post pics about it on tumblr. I think this is how we should feel about God’s love for us. We should feel like it’s something the whole world should be a part of. 

Just some thoughts after an amazing message from Bryce Turner.