The NIV 365-Day Devotional Reading PlanНамуна

Love

The best place to begin a good story is at the beginning. The greatest story — the truest of all true stories — is no different.

Once upon a time, God began telling a story — a true story. Our story. This story begins once upon a time, but not once upon our time. Before time as we know it was even created, there was a Hero: God himself.

Read

Pre-Garden of Eden and pre-world, God enjoyed perfect love within himself. We don’t know what God did during this time when only he existed. But we do know that because God is good, everything was perfect.

God longed to share that goodness and love with others. So somewhere in the story, he made millions of mighty beings who served and worshiped him — angels. Unfortunately, one angel, Satan, wasn’t content with his magnificent status. A couple of Scripture passages seem to symbolically speak of this ancient tragedy. The angel’s “heart became proud on account of [his] beauty” (Ezekiel 28:17). He rebelled and convinced other angels to join him. God was betrayed. His kingdom’s perfect harmony was destroyed.

God cast Satan (also known as Lucifer or the devil) and the other traitors out of his kingdom. But for the sake of sharing his love, he took another risk. He created people.

Think

When we think of God, we tend to see him as the author of the story, the controller of all things. We see him sitting far away, detached, pulling the levers and pushing the buttons and running the stuff of life.

But that’s not the case. While God is indeed the author of the story, his heart and emotions are involved — because at his core “God is love” (1 John 4:8). And because he wants us to truly love him, and because true love is always a choice, he gives us the freedom to choose him and the freedom to reject him.

When the Author makes himself vulnerable to be rejected or loved by the characters in the story, he’s not just the Author anymore. He’s in the story.

Live

God has chosen to be affected by you. Your choices affect him — because he loves you. Deeply.

Taken from NIV The Great Rescue