Romans 11:11–16

¹¹ Did God’s peo­ple stum­ble and fall beyond recov­ery? Of course not! They were dis­obe­di­ent, so God made sal­va­tion avail­able to the Gen­tiles. But he wanted his own peo­ple to become jeal­ous and claim it for them­selves. ¹² Now if the Gen­tiles were enriched because the peo­ple of Israel turned down God’s offer of sal­va­tion, think how much greater a bless­ing the world will share when they finally accept it.

¹³ I am say­ing all this espe­cially for you Gen­tiles. God has appointed me as the apos­tle to the Gen­tiles. I stress this, ¹⁴ for I want some­how to make the peo­ple of Israel jeal­ous of what you Gen­tiles have, so I might save some of them. ¹⁵ For since their rejec­tion meant that God offered sal­va­tion to the rest of the world, their accep­tance will be even more won­der­ful. It will be life for those who were dead! ¹⁶ And since Abra­ham and the other patri­archs were holy, their descen­dants will also be holy—just as the entire batch of dough is holy because the por­tion given as an offer­ing is holy. For if the roots of the tree are holy, the branches will be, too.

Never Gives Up

I sug­gested yes­ter­day that God allows us to choose to accept or reject his love. If we want noth­ing to do with him, he’ll accept that. Sort of.

You see, even if we tell God to leave us alone, he will never give up on us. He may allow us to go through the dark­ness of not know­ing his pres­ence for a sea­son, but he will never stop declar­ing his love to us. All of cre­ation declares his grace, his love.

I’ve had peo­ple come to me and ask if there’s still hope for them. They will share about how they rejected God and told him to leave them alone. They renounced his exis­tence. In some cases, they even hated God. And now, they fear that he will not for­give them. They fear that there is no longer any hope.

Often, I see tears flow when I explain that God never gave up. That it is never too late. He pur­sues us. He waits for us. He loves us. I tell them the story of the Prodi­gal Son and how the father would stand and watch into the dis­tance, wish­ing his lost son would come home. How the father saw the son will still off in the dis­tance and went run­ning to him. God pur­sues us that way. He waits for the small­est of open­ings in our heart, and he runs to us, arms open wide.

In a few days we will cel­e­brate the end of 2009 and the begin­ning of 2010. It’s a time when many decide to start fresh. Per­haps, it’s a good time to open your heart again. He is waiting.

My prayer: Lord, thank you that you have never given up on me. On days when I feel like I have failed you beyond words, you still love me. On days when I choose my way over yours, you wait patiently. You allow me to live life my way if it’s what I want, but you still receive me back into your arms when I come, bro­ken and bruised. Thank you for never giv­ing up. Amen.

Until tomor­row.

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