Prayer for Divine Guidance

Heavenly Father, I ask that your Holy Spirit bless and enlighten me as I read, reflect and rest in the boundless riches of salvation that Christ Jesus has won! Abba Father, draw me closer into the Divine Dance with You, Your Son, and Holy Spirit to continually transform my life here on earth to taste life with you in Heaven! Amen.

Reflection

When do you think that God began to love you? Was it the day you were born? Was it when you first believed in Him? Was it the day you were baptized? The truth is God loved you long before you were born, long before time even began, long before Genesis 1. God’s love for you began when Father, Son, and Holy Spirit overflowed in perichoretic, joyful, self-giving love.

Because “God is love” (1 John 4:8) He hungers to love, to share, to embrace. God created us from the overabundance of His boundless love, not from loneliness or boredom. Some say the world began with the Big Bang, but Scripture tells us it began with the overflowing love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; a love so full, it had to make room for us. “In God there is no hunger that needs to be fulfilled, only plenteousness that desires to give.” (C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

In his farewell letter of 2 Timothy, the apostle Paul teaches about the heart of God before there was a universe, or even before there was time. Paul writes from the Mamertine Prison in Rome as he awaits execution. He charges his young colleague Timothy to suffer for the sake of the Gospel. He reminds Timothy that it is a Gospel worth suffering and dying for:

“Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

(2 Timothy 1:8-10)

Note Paul’s strong words that before there was an Adam, before sin entered the world, before any of our own tangled stories, “grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the worlds began.” Before Creation, before the Fall, you were already included in God’s perichoretic dance of self-giving love. Paul echoes what he wrote elsewhere: “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love” (Ephesians 1:4).

Boundless, limitless love overflowed as God purposed to act in love towards us in grace that cost God the life of His Son. Before we ever loved God or gave Him thought, God called us “not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace.” God did not just tolerate the thought of us but purposed, chose, and loved us. Theologian C. Baxter Kruger explains:

“Before the creation of the world, the Father, Son, and Spirit set their love upon us and planned to bring us to share and know and experience the trinitarian life itself…Before creation, it was decided that the Son would cross every chasm between the Triune God and humanity and establish a real and abiding relationship with us.” (C. Baxter Kruger, The Shack Revisited)

God did not wait for us to seek Him or to reach up to Him, but before the ages “grace was given to us in Christ Jesus.” Grace is not a substance or doctrine, but has a name: Christ Jesus! From eternity grace was lavished on us in Christ Jesus, who came down to take our place in order to take us home to God. Theologian Karl Barth strikingly says: “God does not will to be without us, and He does not will that we should be without Him.” (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II, 1) God’s eternal purpose of grace became a person: Jesus!

Paul wants Timothy, and all of us, to know that neither the manger nor the cross was the beginning of God’s grace, but the manifestation of it in history: “it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 1:10). When the Son of God stepped into time, He was revealing what had been in God’s heart from all eternity: His Father’s embrace. Before there was time, there was God’s love for us. We see this in Jesus’ prayer for us to be embraced with Him: “Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). “The love with which God loves us is none other than that with which he loved his Son from the beginning…that we might be made partakers of the same love and might enjoy it forever.” (John Calvin, Commentary on the Gospel of John)

Your life is not an afterthought for God, a last-minute addition to His plans. You are a longed-for son, a deeply desired daughter, before God created the world. Before time began God was not dreaming of stars and planets, but of sons and daughters to bear His image and share His life. “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is an illusion.” (Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging)

Delight in knowing that you are more than forgiven; you are enfolded in the eternal embrace of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God does not love some future version of you. He loves you now as He has always loved you from before the beginning of time.