Is a Relationship With God Even Possible?预览

Accepting God’s Furious Love

God’s love isn’t some theoretical, million-miles-away kind of love. It’s up in our business. It’s raw and fierce and tender and full of joy. “His desire for you and me can best be described as a furious longing,” wrote that warmhearted, clear-sighted Franciscan Brennan Manning.

God’s love burns bright and hot and true. It will never dim. Not ever. Not even a little.

He’s consumed; he can’t take his eyes off us (Ps. 34:15). He thinks about us all the time. Not for a second has he ever forgotten even one of us (Isa. 49:16). There are so many thoughts about each of us in his head they can’t be counted (Ps. 40:5). His love for you, for me, is so great that it’s literally immeasurable and unfathomable by our human minds (Eph. 3:17–19).

Everyone needs a dad. Sons need to be around their dads. They need to know them. They need to be initiated into their dads’ worlds—to work and play there. They need to walk next to them—to talk with and rely on them. Sons need to live in the provision and under the protection of their dads’ love.

Sadly, it doesn’t always work like that—but it’s how things are meant to work. 

And it’s the same with God. 

We often think what we need is a rescue, a way out, our prayers answered, our circumstances changed—but what we really need is something infinitely bigger. What we really need is our heavenly Dad himself. 

Getting to know him, coming to experience him in our everyday lives, beginning to accept his furious love—it’s the most important thing in our lives. It’s the ball game. But it’s also probably the thing most neglected by modern Christians. 

It’s the altitude ceiling through which few of us break.