How Deep The Father's Love For Us

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about unconditional love, grace and mercy.  Specifically, God’s unconditional love, grace and mercy.  Once you get past all the thoughts of how weird it sounds or feels to be loved by someone who never takes physical form, it’s really amazing.  And believe me, getting past those thoughts is part of the process.  I’ve struggled with it several times, and I’ve been a “Christian” for 90% of my life.  Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and how wonderful it is.  God loves ALL of us unconditionally.  I know it can be a hard concept for a lot of us to grasp, but it’s really true.  And if we didn’t have His unconditional love, there is no way we would be able to show grace or mercy to our loved ones.  We are only able to love because He gave us His love first.  And the more I think about how much He loves and cares for me, the more I feel like I can pass His love on to others through myself.  Plus, it’s all just amazing.  Many of you know that I haven’t had the smoothest ride in life.  And many of YOU have also gone through many struggles, devastations in your lives.  It’s just amazing to have God’s spirit in the midst of those crises.  I think about the very worst obstacles my family has gone through and I know that we wouldn’t be standing together today if it wasn’t for God’s unconditional love, grace and mercy.  I am completely serious, people.  I know a lot of you “don’t believe in God” and/or “hate religion” and I’m sorry for all the miscommunications about God that have made you feel that way.  This isn’t about religion, anyway.  God is not about religion.  I’ve seen so much separation because of religion lately that it literally makes me sick.  But that’s not what this post is about.  That topic’s for another day.    

   

Yesterday Dad and I were talking about Mormons.  My mom has a really close friend who is a Mormon.  She is a very nice lady.  Personally, I like her.  Dad and I were talking about how misguided Mormonism is, and especially when it comes to grace and mercy.  I’ve never really gotten the “inside scoop” on Mormonism, like I’ve never been to their church as an adult.  But I have had conversations with this lady, my parents, and of course I’ve done some research.  It seems like if you do one thing wrong, you’re out.  Like if you disobey one of their rules, you’re kicked out of their church.  That seems a bit extreme to me, if they are trying to make people believe that they are a denomination of Christianity.  It seems like they are missing a huge piece of the pie here.  Where’s the unconditional love?  Where’s the grace?  Where’s the mercy?  Maybe I don’t have all the information here, and please, please correct me if I’m wrong.  But both Dad and I agreed that at least in that situation, we don’t see Mormons practicing God’s grace or mercy.  And that’s a HUGE thing to just ignore. 

One thing that comes to mind as I’m writing this is the lyric, “How deep the Father’s love for us.  How vast beyond all measure.”  It can’t be contained.  And it’s not conditional.  There is definitely a process to get to the place where I am now, where you can just clearly see and feel how God is loving us, and in return, how we are able to love Him and pass His love onto others.  But man, when you get there, there is such peace.  I have so much peace right now.  And I don’t get that very often, so I’m trying to make it stick around as long as I can.  I hope that my words haven’t hurt any of you.  I’m not here to pass judgment on you if you don’t believe the same things I do.  I’m not here to condemn Mormons.  I’m just telling another part of my story, in hopes that it will inspire you.  That maybe it will connect some dots for you, as it has for me. 

Peace and blessings, y’all.  Peace and blessings.