From the prolific pen of Erma Bombeck come these insightful words:

"You don't love me!"  How many times have your kids laid that one on you?  Someday when my children are old enough to understand the logic motivation of a mother, I'll tell them:

I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going and what time you would get home.

I loved you enough to let you discover your friend was a creep.

I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your bedroom, a job that would have taken me 15 minutes.

I loved you enough to ignore what every other mother did or said.

I loved you enough to let you stumble, fall, hurt and fail.

I loved you enough to accept you for what you are, not what I wanted you to be.

Most of all, I loved you enough to say no when you hated me for it. *

The love of God for mankind is compared to the love of a mother for her child: “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; And you shall be comforted in Jerusalem,” God said to the people of Judah through the prophet Isaiah (66:13).

From the Scriptures, we learn some ways that God has demonstrated His love for us.  God says…

I loved you enough to reveal My will for you (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

I loved you enough to allow you to choose whether or not you are going to follow My will (Joshua 24:15; Matthew 7:21).  I didn’t create you to be a robot; I give you the ability to choose.

I loved you enough to allow you to decide if you are going to love Me in return (Mark 12:29-30).  It wouldn’t be love if you were forced to love Me.

I loved you enough to allow you to experience trials in this life because it is only through trials that your faith can be tested and you can grow to spiritual maturity (James 1:2-4).

I loved you enough to prepare an eternal home of bliss if you will only choose to follow Me (John 14:1-6).

I loved you enough to die for you so that you can be saved and live with Me for eternity (John 3:16; Romans 6:23).

“Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends” (John 15:13).  This is what God did for us in the person of Jesus Christ, His Son.  “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit” (1 Peter 3:18).

God will save and give eternal life to those who place their faith and trust in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turn from sin in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).  He will continue to cleanse from sin those who continue to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7-9).

God said, “I love you enough.”  His love is more than enough to save us, if we’ll only choose to love Him in return by trusting and obeying Him.

Won’t YOU?

-- David A. Sargent

* Erma Bombeck, from "Forever, Erma” quoted in Reader's Digest, March 1997, p. 148, as cited in sermon illustrations from www.bible.org.

David A. Sargent, Minister

Church of Christ at Creekwood 
1901 Schillinger Rd. S.
Mobile, Alabama  36695

Archived issues of Living Water can be viewed and accessed from our website at: www.creekwoodcc.org