God Doesn't Change the Rules

The summer camp where I volunteered last week got all the young male campers out into the woods for a rousing game of what is loosely called "Capture the Flag." After 45 minutes without anyone capturing anything except scrapes and muddy clothes, our Fearless Leader decided to mix it up a bit by changing some of the rules. After the new rules didn't work out, somebody else had an idea about a different rule change, and off we went again. After another hour of more confusion on the rules, we ended the game, all glad for one thing:
  God doesn't keep changing the rules on us!

You see, God is love and God will always love, because God is Father, Son and Spirit, eternally in a flawless dance of self-giving love. That's who God is. He can't be anything else or he wouldn't be God. And because God is eternally love, he created the universe we live in, and all the people on earth, in order to expand that circle of love. So God the Father loves all of us just like he loves God the Son. God the Son loved us so much he came to live with us in our tacky little human existence, gave us meaning because he lived in our own skin with us, then gave his life for us on the cross. Then he rose again from the dead, so he could bring us all back from the dead too. That's a lot of giving! And God does that giving simply out of love -- the love that he is and always will be!

His purpose was always to save us, not to let us live and die alone, even when we turned away from him and started down the road toward death. His purpose will always be to love us, because he is love. He doesn't change the rules on us. He doesn't decide to take away life from us because we haven't been good enough lately or "captured enough flags" today.

It was all planned in advance (Eph. 1:3-8).  It's settled (John 19:30), and God won't ever take it back. So you can work, secure in knowing that your works haven't earned your place with God and so can't make you miss out (Eph. 2:8-9). You can rest, secure in knowing that Jesus has done the work for you, and he asks you just to come to him and rest in what he has done (Mat. 11:28-30) which is also called faith -- trusting him instead of yourself. And you can wake up tomorrow morning knowing that those rules haven't changed.

Does this sound good enough yet? It keeps getting better, because at the end of this life is an intimate dance of love that will last forever. So how about saying yes to God, who has already said "YES!" to you? And if you've said that "Yes" to God, are you living completely in that confidence of trusting his completed work work you? Either way, if the answer is "Not yet" then let's talk.