Responding to His wondrous love -- now

We've been studying about God's wondrous love, and about our response to it. Today we'll see that we should respond promptly.....now!

Our God is an active God. He is at work in our lives always....encouraging, inviting, directing, and guiding. He pours out His love for us in blessings each day.
Our response to God's wondrous love should happen now. We should not be inhibited by our own weakness, or by past failures. We should not be discouraged, and dwell on our unworthiness.

Jesus showed us this when He called the first disciples. Remember the scene at the Sea of Galilee, when Peter and his men had been fishing and had not caught anything? In fact, he had been so singularly unsuccessful that he had given up and was going to come back in to shore. Jesus directed Peter and the others to cast those nets right in the same place where they'd had no luck at all.....so Peter did, and immediately found the nets straining to the breaking point with a huge number of fish! Jesus, after showing him this sign of his calling, tells Peter to follow Him.

Does Peter cast cares to the wind and joyfully agree?
Nope.
He immediately raises the ole "unworthy" objection. (Don't many of us use this one nowadays?)

When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:8)

Ummmm, well, yes, that's true.
But Jesus doesn't pay any attention to that truth.....

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.”  (Luke 5:10b)

In fact, we are familiar with the fact that Jesus surrounded Himself with sinners. Remember when He called Matthew? Matthew was a tax collector; as such, he was an agent of the hated Romans, and people hated him just as much as they hated the Romans. Why? Well, he made his living prying money out of the hands of destitute peasants! And he may have been like some of the tax collectors who over-taxed and then kept some for themselves.....we don't know for sure. Jesus met Matthew sitting at his counting table and said very simply, "Follow me." That unworthy sinner responded by getting up from the table and following Jesus.
Matthew was happy with his new life, and threw a nice party to celebrate -- he invited all of his old friends to come and meet his new Friend. Well, those ole busy-bodies, the Pharisees, objected and Jesus replied:

 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”  (Mark 2:17)

We see very plainly that Jesus entered into people's lives and invited them to follow Him....right from where He found them. In boats, working with fishnets, from tax desks, and other places, too. And there is something really wonderful for us to notice there: He doesn't demand that they do anything first. He doesn't say that first they need to go to church (the synagogue).
And we shouldn't think that we need to delay our response to God until we deal with our character defects. We don't need to have a scorecard that we keep that shows we've been a pretty good kid for a certain length of time first....then follow Him. Yes, we are unworthy. Yes, we are sinful. But He pours that wondrous love over us and into us, and we are ready to respond to Him.

Will we fall down?
Yes.
Will we fail Him?
Yes.
But our response to Him grows and matures. It deepens over time. Our salvation is a process -- not a one time event.  Paul wrote to the Corinthians that he fed them milk, not solid food, because they were not able to take it. (I Corinthians 3:2) And so we know that God will give us what we need; if we are beginners, or if our hearts are troubled or weak, He will give us milk. Later on, we will receive solid food.
But all along the path, we will be answering His call to follow Him.
You see, it doesn't matter if we think we are unworthy. He sees us as His children, worthy of His love and His sacrifice on the cross.
And we don't need to worry about "doing" anything in particular. Following Him doesn't automatically mean that we'll be heading off to Zanzibar, or a jungle mission, or anywhere else. Sometimes it just means that we'll be watching. And waiting. And listening.

As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,    as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress,so our eyes look to the Lord our God,    till he shows us his mercy. (Psalm 123:2)

Please don't get me wrong here, when you read the verse above. We are not slaves to our God -- we are willing and cheerful in our voluntary service to Him. That service arises from that fire that we mentioned last time -- a desire to be like Him, and to serve Him, because of His love to us. I showed that verse because that attentiveness is how we should watch and wait for His guidance.

Perhaps the question that most embodies our response to God, is "what more does God want of me?" We love a God Who loves us without limits....we love Him in return. What more can we do to love Him? The rich young man in the Gospels asked Jesus that.....he wanted to do MORE. Jesus looked at him and loved him, and said to get rid of his possessions and follow.
Jesus was challenging the young man to be free of what he claimed as his own.
He challenges us, too. What do we call "ours"? What do we cling to? It may be our worldly possessions. It may be our ideas. It may be our desires. (If we put any of these in front of God, they have become an idol.....we need to be free.)
God calls us to offer these things to Him. That doesn't mean He will take them away. When we offer them to God, He may shape and form them and use them for His purposes. We may receive them back as tools to use in His kingdom.

He looks on us with love. What more can we do to respond to His love? Now?