It must begin at the foot of the cross.

There…do you see us? We are the gravel, the dirt there. We are the darkness that obscures the light of day. Look there…see us! We are the scattered bits and pieces of filthy rags(Is 64:6)which the wind has blown here and there. We are the filth there, full of the stench of the world. We are so lost…blind, damaged and injured! Sin has so demented us that we are unable to even recognize our depraved condition!

If, we were somehow under the mistaken impression that we were Redeemed because we were somebody of importance, let me let you know that we were…nothing!  We were not worthy to so much as ‘touch’ the ‘soles’ of His mud-caked sandals!

Please, let’s ‘wallow’ in this revelation. Let us ‘dine’ on it! Let's, as Jesus said, eat His flesh and drank His blood, chewing it up well and swallowing it! When we can digest it…fully…then let us dare to reverently look up and ‘gaze’ upon our Deliverer! See Him there …beaten, crown of thorns, entrails dangling, blood dripping, hanging by nails to a tree…dead! For us!

And this is where it begins.  For only when we can embrace the extreme depth of our worthlessness in the Light of the Cross... can we embrace the Magnitude of His Everlasting Love for us!

Yes, so vile, we were  ‘reeking’ with the stench of decay but, astoundingly, unbelievably…   'The King’ wanted us! Pushing past our nauseating odor…He reached. Ignoring our detestable wretchedness…He reached. Approaching, dispelling the darkness of our existence…He reached. He reached down and through our miry infested places …so purposely and yet, so tenderly…He reached…and picked us up.

And this is what the world can’t understand. This is why so few come…and stay. Because no one can relate to being ‘filth’, for...who could ever ‘Love’ filth? Love it enough to carry it nestled in their bosom, safe and sheltered and, what is more, to die for it?  Our God does, and did!

He looked down and pitied our condition. He saw that not one of us would ever make it to our heavenly home without a Supreme Atoning Sacrifice. God, Himself, had mandated that it should be thus so. You recall, the Israelites were instructed that once, each year, they were to take a perfect, pure goat/lamb(scape goat), without any blemish and use it as a sacrifice,  to atone for their sins. They laid all their sins on the head of that goat and sent it out of the camp(the gate)where it roamed and died...atoning for all their sins. God needed a Perfect, sinless Lamb, One that could be Sacrificed for the atoning of all man-kind...forever! There was no one that Perfect, that Pure…but Him. So, He took that cherished part of Him, that Beloved part of Him that had always been there('let us make man' Gen 1:26) from the beginning, The Son...wrapped Him in flesh and sent Him to Redeem us.  Isn’t it remarkable that ‘He’ sought us? That ‘He’ came for us? And why? Because, despite all we were and we were not, He Loved us!

We can only understand and appreciate the demonstration of His Enormous Sacrificial Love for us when we can recognize the ‘insignificant’, lowly state we were in! Nobody Else would have done such a thing for the likes of us, but God did! Well, you say, He already knew  that He was going to raise Jesus up, that He would live again. Yes He did, but consider what God allowed His Son to go through before He even paid the ultimate price of death.

Those of you who carry within you the love for a child (biological or otherwise); how would you feel if somebody slapped that child? Would you stand there and let them get away with it? Of course not! Why you, having emotionally felt the pain of that slap, would be furious and, of course, you would try to defend them! But our Heavenly Father stood there and watched as they literally pulverized His Son...for us! To really grasp God's Love let's really look at what was going on at the time.

You see, with the birth of Jesus, the devil knew his fate(Matt 8:29, Jam 2:19). He knew it was all over for him. He already knew the winner of the final battle. He knew he was headed for the pit!  He knew his power over mankind was lost but only 'when' and ‘if’, Jesus went to the Cross and the Atoning Blood of Salvation was shed! So, the dispicable author of ‘the pride’ that goes before a fall, indeed, 'the pride' that got him kicked out of Heaven...showed the vile brass haughtiness of his sate evil nature and decided to try to prevent his God-ordained fate…anyway!

In his vile arrogancy, the devil challenged God!  He tried to stop Jesus from going to the Cross in every way he could…even though he knew, Jesus would not turn around! For, he had tempted Jesus in the mountains and it didn’t work. He came at Him in the Garden and it hadn’t worked there either. Therefore, believe me when I say, the cruel, venemous, torture that Jesus endured from the time He was taken prisoner to His last breath was far more  excruciating than mankind can even begin to imagine!

Without a doubt, satan had entered into those soldiers! The engrained lasciviousness of those soldiers was intensified.  Lucifer had free-reign and his evil loathing of God was unleashed on The Son! God, like He did with Job(who was a foreshadow of Christ), allowed the devil to do, through those soldiers, what he wanted to do to Jesus. And the devil used all his hellish power to try and make Jesus change His mind. He wanted to dissuade Jesus. He wanted Jesus to call on His angels and use the supernatural powers that He always had but never accessed... to deliver Himself! My God, I tell you, our Eternal Savior felt the relentless,  debilitating torment of the attack to the very utmost of its wicked capacity! This is substantiated by the Word which tells us there was a time when the separation between Him and God was so great that Jesus couldn’t even feel Jehovah! In the last moments when His chosen state of humanity could take it no more, He cried out to His Divinity… ‘My God! My God! Why have You forsaken me?’ But still, for you, for me…for us, He would not come down from that Cross, though He could have! That’s how Significant, how important, how valuable, how much we are ...Loved by Him!

Now the question is; What do we do with this Kind of Love? How do we handle, that is...reverence this Kind of Love? We cannot afford to neglect nor take for granted this Kind of Love! No, we do not take this Kind of Love lightly, at all! We must revel in it, rejoice in it, bathe in it! We must embrace it, treasure it and with all our hearts, minds and souls try to be reciprocal of this Kind of Love! Certainly, being human we could never Love God the way He Loves us...but, we can try! To the very best of our ability...we can try!

And as we try, as we grow closer to Him we come to realize that without Him and His Love... we are nothing…still!  Yes, you heard me right...still! We will never reach perfection...on this side of heaven. We will never apprehend that place of attainment (Phil 3:12-14)whereby we can make it within the glow of our own egos on earth, but will with joy always pursue, always need God and His Love constantly. As, outside of God and His Love we are absolutely nothing! For all that we are or ever will be…is only all that…HE IS!

Thus, it is when we can embrace our Insignificance Before God…that we can truly embrace  our Significance…to God! In other words; only when we can fully embrace how much we, who err constantly, don't deserve to be loved, can we truly embrace how much we are loved!

JHN6:53-57,1:26-27,3:16,MAT22:37-38,8:29,ROM5:6-8,7:18-25,PHIL3;12,JAM2:19,REV3:17,JOB1:7-12,2:1-7,25:6,PS1:4,IS40:11,64:6,JER31:3