Jim McGuiggan
not ashamed of the gospel he says because because
It’s God’s power!
To do what? To save the world.
How does it do that? It tells of God’s faithfulness.
his pursuit of us, his relentless running after us, like Francis Thompson’s extended poem, The Hound of God.
I think that’s the name, but it’s the same name. But it’s the Hound of God. The fellow in the poem is running away from God. God’s picture is this big, hound Google it. It’s great poem. And he’s running. He doesn’t want God. And he stops and he listens and he hears power.
He said, I hid everywhere. I hid under the, in the labyrinth. I hid down in broken down buildings. I hid behind this. I hid behind my pride. I hid I hid I hid But all the time when I stopped above my heart beating, I hear, Pat, Pat. He said, do you know what I was worried about? Listen, listen. Do you know what he says? He said, do you know what I was worried about?
I was afraid if I got help, I’d lose everything.
God kept saying to him in the padding of the hound that came after him, everything that shelters you from me is your enemy.
Everything that hides you from me
is your enemy. Every relationship that draws you and hides me from you is your enemy. I and I alone.
I am life. I am your life. So here he’s saying when we were yet without strength, we couldn’t depend on ourselves, our flesh couldn’t get it done. Our moral response to God was abominable and created the alienation. When all of that was going on, God said to his son,
go give my love to the world.” And he said, listen, in the light of all of the hope, you see, listen, if we have been, if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more now that we are back in friendship
with him sin being dealt with.
How much more will we have life through his life? He dies and in his dying, that takes care of the sin issue, and in his rising, life is ours.
We are now forgiven.
but we are looking for life. Brim full of life.
The message God has sent in and as an actual person, Jesus. The message God has sent.
It’s not that you’re gonna float around on a cloud eternally beating the brains out of a harp.
Life is what he offers. Yeah, and that’s what he says we’re gonna get.