October 19 - God Loves Me Best

 Read today’s texts first: Job 5; Psalms 108; Acts 10,11

MAXIMize YOUR DAY

God may love you best (better than anyone else
loves you), but He does not love you more. 

I’m old enough to remember the Smothers Brothers and Tommy’s famous complaint of his younger brother Dick, “Mom always liked you best!”  I heard the same thing from my five older siblings (one of the hazards of being the baby), but in our family it was true and for good reason!  I was just more loveable and my parents were only human!

But, it is simply not true of God.  He lives up to our God-inspired ideals. He may love me best (better than anyone else loves me), but He does not love me more.  Contrary to the theology of some who follow some reformed thinking, God is not partial.  Yes, He is sovereign and has every right to play favourites, but our readings in Acts today remind us that He is always consistent with His values (10:34,35).

God loves everyone; Jesus died for everyone; no one is excluded from His grace (unmerited favour). Note: The one exceptional passage in Romans 9:11-16 was an illustration to explain to the Jews how God has the right to include the Gentiles.  The rest of the letter defends His impartiality to choose all of us and our free will to choose Him (Romans 10:11-17).

The Jews had misunderstood their role as God’s chosen people and misrepresented God to the rest of the world.  They were chosen, not to the exclusion of others, but to take the impartial love of their God to every nation.  So ingrained was their misunderstanding and mistrust of those outside the Jewish faith, God had to shock Peter into taking the gospel to the Gentiles with a repeated vision of pigs in a blanket!

That new awareness of God’s impartiality, led by Peter and Paul, coupled with persecution from their own people, drove the mission of the church outward. Today we face our own biases and prejudices, sometimes thinking surely God doesn’t want us to reach “those” people.  The answer is always “yes He does!” 

"Lord, show me today who I need to tell, 'God loves you best too!'”