Acel van Ommen

 “Heaven meets Earth like a sloppy wet kiss, and my heart turns violently inside of my chest. I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way He loves us.” - How He loves Us.

As I listen to that song, I think about my 3yr old and 1yr old son. I love them dearly. I stare at them when they sleep. Seeing their saliva drool makes me smile. I smother them with sloppy wet kisses on their cheeks and their toes. It doesn’t matter if they are stinky sometimes.. Oh How I love them!!

Yes, there are times that they have their tantrums. There are times that they disobey and sometimes try to manipulate me and Danny using their charm (yeah..at their young age, you don’t need to teach them that..It’s innate in us to do whatever it takes to get what we want). These are times that can hurt me so, because I know I have to discipline them and so it would go well with them when they grow up. But though I know they will misbehave again, it won’t change the fact that they are still my sons. My love for them won’t change. I will get hurt and will try my best to raise them up godly, but I will never disown them when they make a mistake. I will not tell them “Because you did this, you will not eat lunch.” NO, I can’t do that..they can still eat and sleep in their room and stay in my house..Because they are my children.

I was thinking about this, and remembered that that’s how God’s grace is in our lives. God loves us dearly. He is like a father who would kiss his son with sloppy wet kisses all over. That’s the intimacy that he wanted from us. A spirit of sonship and not a relationship based on rules and rituals.

In Romans 8:15, it says:

“For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” (Abba is a more personal and intimate word for a father, like-Daddy or Papa)

What’s the difference between a slave and a son. A slave just follows the rules and the duties assigned by the master. If the master is not happy with the slave, the former can just replace it with another slave or sell the other slave to someone else. That’s why there is fear that he might displease the master. There is no assurance of love and acceptance from the master. While the son has the favor from the master of the house. Because the master of the house is his father. The son receives an inheritance from the father, and can use the things owned by his father. The son receives the love and the acceptance of the father even without performing. When a son makes a mistake, he can still run to the father to ask forgiveness.

Maybe you don’t have a good relationship with your Father, and you’re now having a hard time understanding what I’m sharing to you. But the good news is, God is not like our earthly dads. :)   He is perfect.. He is a perfect father who holds perfect love for his children. And he showed that love when He himself took our sins by dying on the cross. The law is perfect… the wages of sin is death, that means all of us deserves the punishment because all of us rebelled one way or another.. But because He doesn’t want us to be separated from Him, He took the punishment that should be for us, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.

 “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”- John 1:12

That’s the grace of God. That whoever receives Jesus and what He did on the cross- dying for our sins so that our sins are paid for; we become His righteousness and receives the right to become a child of God.

Wow! He was the one who made the way so we can have that relationship with him. Not like a slave, but like a daughter/son.

Does this mean that we can go on sinning because it was already paid full on the cross? I think If we kept on sinning deliberately and intentionally then that means we did not understand GRACE and what Jesus did for us.  

Grace is an unmerited favor. We don’t deserve it, but God still gave it. It means I realized how dirty I am, yet Jesus still died for me. It means acknowledging I need a savior to save me from this pattern of sin.  It means being truly sorry of what I did wrong. It’s realizing that No matter how many times I sinned, God still forgives me when I run to him and ask for forgiveness. With “grace” I can be honest with God, and not try to hide and justify the things that I do that are wrong. And because of that, He heals me, and his lovingkindness leads me to really turn away from that sin and turn to Him.

It’s his Grace that empowers me to do His will and not my will..To love His will and not my will. That’s power!

What happens is, when we have encountered that grace and love of Jesus, that grace would change our hearts. Our desires will change. The things of the flesh that we used to love , suddenly becomes undesirable. It makes us feel sad to make God sad. It makes us want to do great things for him..just like a man crazy in love with a woman.

It makes us a new person. We now act like a son of God.we do good things as a result of that grace.  We do good things just like a son/daughter of God should..because we are BEING a child of God…not trying to act or do things to look good externally- following all the set of rules “do this or don’t do that”…because if we are just doing it externally..we’ll get tired…and we can’t make it… apart from that grace encounter with the Holy Spirit, we will always just be “doing”….and not “being”.