From: "Beverly French" <frenchb@vcss.k12.ca.us>
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Subject: Sonday Blessings
Date: Sunday, January 04, 1998 9:44 AM

Many of these Sunday messages of late have been about God's love and today
I would like to share some added thoughts.  The Apostle John has much to
say concerning this and I will begin with l John 4:9-10:

"By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only
begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.  In this is
love not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son to be the
propitiation for our sins."

Do we really comprehend even in the smallest measure how great a love this
is?  Just think that while we were His enemies, sinners, opposed to and not
even wanting to know Him, He died that we might be saved and reconciled to
Himself.  The pure and sinless for the wretched and sinful. 
 
For a discription of our former state read Ephesians 2:l-3.
Verse 3 "Among then we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh,
indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature
children of wrath, even as the rest." 

Because God first loved and sent His Son, we now love Him.  It was NOT the
other way around.  Look at Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3 does it not suggest
that we must seek to comprehend this Love?  

"For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family
in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according
to the riches of His glory, to be strengthed with power through His Spirit
in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through (by)
faith; and that you being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to
comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height
and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that
you may be filled up to all the fulness of God."  Eph 3:14-19

As Paul says this love surpasses knowledge.  The way to come to know this
Love is to know Christ Jesus our Lord.  As the songs says, "To know Him, to
know Him is life..."  Let us make it our prayer and priority that we may
come to know Christ in a greater measure this coming year.

Blessings to all.