If you have never felt or known the sheer power and strength of God's love, take another look at Jesus dying on the cross.

First John 4:10 says, "This is real love—not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

God loves you right now. He loved you when you were doing wrong. He loved you when you were off course. The apostle Paul says that nothing can separate us from the love of God. You are a marked man, a marked woman. God put His love on you. Now you are permanently loved.

God has all favorites. He's not like us in that way. He doesn't have to pick and choose, because He has unlimited love. He doesn't just show love, He doesn't just express

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.

God be merciful to me a sinner.

Fagan hated what his father was, but he still loved him. I reckon that's the way God is. Loving us enough to send Jesus but hating the way we live. Hating the sin, not the sinner.

Wayward, stubborn, contentious as he was, God loved him.

Love begets love; and thus the love of Christ displayed upon the cross woos and wins the sinner and binds him repenting to the cross, believing and adoring the matchless depths of a Saviour's love.

But his love is greater than all our hate and he will not rest until Judas has turned to him, until Satan has turned to him, until dark has turned to him; until we can all, all of us without exception, freely return his look of love with love in our own eyes and hearts. And then, healed, whole, complete but not finished, we swill know the joy of being co-creators with the one to whom we call. Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

And another lovely paradox: we can be humble only when we know that we are God's children, of infinite value, and eternally loved.

William Langland, writing around 1400, said, 'And all the wickedness in the world that man might work or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal in the sea.