What Are We If God Loves Us More Than Jesus? (And By The Way, He Does)

We are so precious to God that even His own begotten Son is secondary. I am talking about you. Whoever you are, whatever you are, you are more precious to, more loved by God than anything else in the world. You are. Yes, little stinking you. Us.

"For this is how [much] Allaha loved humanity, that He gave forth His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him does not perish, except that they may have life everlasting" (John 3:16 Alexander). Eternity with Him. He (!) wants you (!) for that! God wants us in eternal communion with Him. For the real eternity! You, me, Him--together as One. For what we are then...is Him. THAT is the symbol of the streets of gold. Everything we think, say, or do...is Him.

D. L. Moody surprised me. In The Way To God: And How To Find It (1983, Springdale, PA: Whitaker House, p. 5 and 14 [or the first two chapters]), he said, "If only I could make men understand the real meaning of the Apostle John's words--'God is love.' I would take that single text and go around the world proclaiming this glorious truth." Yet Moody says he never preached on John 3:16: "'God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' I have never been able to preach from that text. I have often thought I would: but it is so high that I can never climb to its height; I have just quoted it and passed on. Who can fathom the depth of those words: 'God so loved the world'? We can never scale the heights of His love or fathom its depths. Paul prayed that he might know the height, the depth, the length, and the breadth, of the love of God; but it was past his finding out. It 'passeth knowledge' (Ephesians 3:19 KJV)."

"God so lived the world." I would have thought that John 3:16 would always have been Moody's primary text. But no. It was too much--too high and too deep--for him. Why? Maybe because it reveals what we are. Dare he confess it? Dare we confess it? What we are, what we REALLY are, is more precious to God than Jesus Christ. To have us He gave--GAVE(!)--Jesus' back to the smiters and allowed Him to go through the most horrible and suffering of deaths. Because what we are was worth it. We caused Jesus' suffering, and yet He said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34 Everyone). He knew how precious we are to God, how much God loves us. Why? What ARE we?

Him. In the End, we consciously are Him manifest. THAT is what we are to be in prayer. The technique is not magic. Its context is. First we go "there" ("Come unto Me" Matthew 11:28)--communing with God in a meditative, altered state of consciousness (like T. L. Osborn's), and thinking from there we do the technique. Without the "there," the technique is vain repetition. To get "there," THINK ON THAT LOVE. Absorb it. Assume it. Appreciate it. Revel and rejoice in it. You will find Jesus there, loving you.