Seeking the lost!

( I really really love this image to me it shows me that God continually reaches out for us to help us from all the things in life that are drowning us. We don't have to go through this life on our own all we have to do is reach out to God and he will be there instantly. His hand is not too short to save and his ear is not to deaf to hear. (Isaiah 59:1) 

If you're lost, God will find you.

In Jesus, Gods love and mercy extends to those who hate him. (Romans 5:10) God looked down upon this shrivelled and sin-sick world and understood that there were millions of us who hated him only because we did not know him. Many of us were confused by the lies of our fathers. (Jeremiah 16:19)

God was in Jesus, reconciling the world unto himself. God sent Jesus so that we could know God and be reconciled to him. Jesus was and is the shining forth of everything that God is - because Jesus is God. That is how we can get to know God. If you ask what grace is, it is God sending forth his only Son to die for your pardon so that you can come back to God, knowing that you are forgiven.

In the story of the Prodigal Son, the Bible pictures God as a love-sick Father who constantly scanning  the horizon for the return of his children. When he sees one of us approaching, even if it is from a very great distance, He runs to embrace us and restore to us everything that we have squandered.

What of those who have never heard the gospel? Well, actually, according to the Bible, there is no such person. See John 1:9, Romans 1:18-20, Psalm 19:1-6, Psalm 14 and Romans 3:10-18. My understanding of these text is that people know enough about God to know that they need him and that they need to seek him, but they do not seek him or want him. So God came to seek them.

Again, what of those who personally and utterly hate God? God is still seeking them. He will go to any length to save them. He has no pleasure in their self destruction, and he takes no delight in punishing them. His grace is limited only by their deaths, for it is appointed unto men once to die and after that comes judgement. That is why God does not want anyone to die, but live and learn of him. And yet, inevitably, all must die. Oh God, Help us to live in your grace, and to love others in Jesus name Amen!