Choosing Love

Romans 1:28-32
28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.

29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,

30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;

31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Man, if I was going to write a warm and fuzzy blog entry, this would not be the way to start it!  I read this verse and I cringe.  I probably cringe for a number of different reasons.

For me personally, there was a time in my life that I knew "of" God.  I grew up in church, but I chose to live life the way I wanted to.  Everything was open to me if I could afford it or get my hands on it.  I didn't care about what God thought on the matter.  However, I always had God in the back of my mind when I did those things.  I realize now that God let me see that what seemed so inviting on the surface was really destroying me.  I think when we are at our darkest, it is so easy to see the light of Christ.  Many come to Christ at a very low point in their life.  Once they do, they try to change and follow Him.

However, many then think that they are not good enough to stand before God or other Christians but if they clean up a few things first, then maybe they can step foot in a church.  If someone walks into a church and the people there act like they are perfect, then that someone should run screaming from that building and find a church with real people in it.  A pastor once said that if there is a perfect church, none of us could go there.  We'd break the track record.

As I think of the verses above and when I look at the definition of "depraved", there's no real surprise:

de·prave   /dɪˈpreɪv/ [dih-preyv]
–verb (used with object), -praved, -prav·ing.
1. to make morally bad or evil; vitiate; corrupt.
2. Obsolete . to defame.

At some point, if we fight God, God will let us have exactly what we want, even if it's not Him.  You see, God understands something deeper when it comes to our relationship.  God does not want us to be robots.  He could force us to obey Him, but God wants us to love Him.

Zola Levitt, in one of his books, made the comment that the Nazi soldiers could get a Jew to do anything by using force.  However, there was one precious thing the soldiers could not make a Jew do.  A soldier could never make a Jew love him.  No amount of force could make that happen.  In the pictures of piles of dead Jewish bodies, the one thing a Nazi could not rob from them was love.

God does not need us to accept Him nor does He force us to follow Him.  His motive is that He loves us and He wants our love.  We can choose depravity or we can choose Him.  He will not force you.  You will have to decide to give your love to Him.  He will never take it.  But I promise you, if you give your love to Him, He's worth it and you will never be the same.