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Archives: August/September 2010
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Archives: August/September 2010
Auditioning for God
By Dan Wilton
To be or not to be! I telleth thou that I...er I mean: forsooth! I’ll start again. Shakespeare. Some love it, some hate it. I recently had to audition for a part in a Shakespeare play that was going to be performed at my church. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect and was a bit worried that I wouldn’t be good enough. It turned out that, due to a severe lack of actors, I got two parts just for turning up! I even managed to avoid being in any slightly embarrassing Romeo and Juliet situation. Although the experience wasn’t what I expected, it did get me thinking...
We have a God who loves us no matter what. The word used for this kind of unconditional love is agape (pronounced aGApay). Agape describes a love that is complete and whole- a love that only God can truly give, a love that we never have to audition for.
This love is so strong, so amazing, that He gave up his son so that we may live. But why? Why does God love us when He knows the depths of our hearts? Surely our sin should mean he hates us?
Firstly, I’m afraid there is no good reason why God loves us. We’re simply not worth it.
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Romans 3:23 (NIV)
You see? There’s simply no good reason why. Still not convinced? Check this out:
If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
1John 1:10 (NIV)
No matter who you are, no matter what sort of a life you live, you have sinned against God. You have sinned against a God so holy, that sin simply cannot exist in his presence.
So how can He love us? “Hang on!” I hear you cry, “My family still loves me and I.….occasionally do things wrong.” (Although it’s obviously not your fault). This is true and you could argue that God loves us because He made us and has a fatherly responsibility over us. The thing is, the love from our families or friends still can’t take into account all our wrong doings.
Put it this way: if you have a new puppy, you love it to bits. If it poos on the carpet, you still love it but you might be a bit annoyed. If it poos on the carpet every single day you might start to go off your lovely puppy and wish you’d bought a cat instead!
We as humans don’t generally ’poo on the carpet’, but we do muck up. Say you sinned once every day for the whole of your 16 years, you would have sinned a whopping 5,844 times! That would be a lot of poo…
God knows every time we muck up and it hurts him deeply. Despite all this, He still loves us enough to want a relationship with us. The only way that this was ever going to happen was through sending Jesus to die on the cross. Without Jesus, we would still be blocked from God by an impassable wall of sin.
We have an amazing God who sent a savior to die for us! He loves us so much that He wants to spend eternity with us- the humans who are so worthless in comparison to him! It would be like us trying to love a germ.
Although God has no good reason to love us, the important thing is that He does. He deserves all our praise and adoration simply for putting up with us- let alone actually loving us! Let your whole life be a song of worship to him- the God who we never have to audition for; the God who loves you more than anyone who every lived and the God who died so that we may live. And the next time you have to audition for anything, sit an exam, go to a job interview or read some Shakespeare, just remember that God loves you- although I haven’t the foggiest idea why!
About the author
Dan is 16, likes cricket, photography and God! He plays the clarinet and is hoping to study English, history, maths and physics at college. He's from Eastleigh (near Southampton), and if you like his article, you can read more of his thoughts at his blog:
the diary of a teenage christian...
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