Words from Will: The Gospel Message

When I started on the theme of the basic Gospel message back in August, it was obvious to me that the central theme of that message was and is love. We experience God’s gratuitous love in the act of Creation and His Sacrificial love in the Incarnation and death of Jesus. We see how that love triumphs over sin and death through the resurrection and comes to dwell in us through the Holy Spirit. We struggle to accept that love in our lives and seek healing, grace, and mercy in the sacraments. We learn to enact that love in our own lives through prayer, and service, and sacrificial self-giving to others. Finally we will come to experience God’s love in its indescribable fullness, as we enter completely into His presence.

For all the confused stories about love we experience in our culture, our media, and our lives, the love we are truly seeking can only be found in our Creator, for He created us to be in right relationship with Him, as His Children. We are all individuals, and we are all loved individual-ly by God. And each of us must individually make a decision to respond to that love or not. That is the great drama of our lives: Will we respond to the Love of God? Will we accept that Love, be transformed by the Love, and share that Love with others?

God’s love is offered freely, but it is an offer, not an imposition. Grace is a gift, not a mandate. My prayer for each person reading this is that you would accept that gift of divine adoption—perhaps more deeply in your life, perhaps for the very first time. Entrust yourself to the God who loves you enough to die for you.

Challenge: Especially if you have never done so before, accept in your heart the mercy and forgiveness of Jesus, and honestly resolve to follow Him as your Lord and Savior.