Godsteps....Beyond Introductions

It is at this point that we move beyond introductions and begin to wade into the deep. As I stated in the last blog, the step of repentance requires us to do something decisive. We must make a move. We must take a stand. We must make a choice to respond to God. Now I said, "respond to God" and not "move toward God" for a reason. Before we press on towards understanding the choice we must make (i.e. the Godstep of repentance), we need to understand a few things about the character of GOD. First, we must recognize that GOD made the first move toward us long before we ever thought about Him or recognized Him as God. GOD did the unthinkable and decided to go into action on our behalf long before we ever could have made a move toward Him. The idea that God made the first move is a mind boggling concept! The Bible tells us in Romans 5:8 that "when we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners (New Living Translation)." Now if you have been around religion or church very long you have probably heard this before. But before you blow on by this concept, please stop and think about it for a minute. While we were GOD's enemies (like we talked about last time) GOD decided to take a step toward us to enable us to have peace with Him? Why? Why would GOD decide to move toward a relationship with people like us who by nature passionately hated and rebelled against Him. We will talk about that more next time before we move on towards the step of repentance.