Real LOVE is personal

                 I was thinking the other day of how thrilled Bro. Jeff would have been while the Atlanta Hawks were on their 19 game winning streak. He loved the Atlanta Hawks. He loved them when they were losing. He was an Atlanta Hawks fan. He loved to talk about them. I like college hoops not pro hoops. He knew that but he would still talk to me about his Hawks. I didn’t care about the Hawks but I enjoyed his telling of the game and how excited he was about their play. Those thoughts bring a smile to my face even now as I write these words.

                Max Lucado says that if you hold up a dime to the night sky at arm’s length and block your vision you are blocking out 15 million stars. With just one lone dime 15 million stars. How many dimes would it take to obscure the night sky I wonder? Consider how vast is the cosmos that God created and that’s just what we can see and imagine and there is more than that. The idea of those BIG numbers makes my head hurt. I think that is cool. It makes for me, God be huge and vast and outrageous. I need a BIG God. The cosmos is my proof.

                That vastness makes God out there. That’s the down side of a great big God, he is OUT THERE not IN HERE where I am, stuck. Ah but the manger changed all that. God said yes I’m out there but I am also right here and have moved into the neighborhood. God took the step to make his greatness personal out of his even greater love. Real love is personal. The Christmas story is personal for the characters and the readers. That’s what makes it great. God who made this vastness of time and space also existed within the same confines of time and space. I think that is the evidence of a personal approach, a real approachable love that overcomes the greatness.

                A preacher can preach the most eloquent sermon ever but if it fails to connect on an intimate, personal level with the listener of what point is it? The most powerful preacher has the listener’s ear due to a personal presence in that life. A preacher does not a pastor make nor does a pastor make a preacher. The greatest preacher has to make it personal. The greatest pastor has to be personal. We have to feel like he is speaking right to me. That is personal and powerful. That is real love.

                Bro. Jeff made me enjoy hearing about the Atlanta Hawks because he loved it and he made it personal to me through his experience. That also made him a great pastor. That same quality is what your friends and family desperately want and need to know that God is personal to you because HE is way out there for them. If you really love them you will make God personal first for you and then to them. Let them learn to love Him as you do. Oops maybe your love needs some work. He’s not personal any more.

Don’t worry He wants to be………..Call his name………………. He’ll be there.

                 

In HIS Service and yours,

Bro G