Embracing God's Transformative and Unconditional Love

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Dallas Willard wrote in the Divine Conspiracy that the acid test of any is does it present a God who is thoroughly lovable, and if it doesn't, if it fails to present a God who is joyful and friendly and winsome and thoroughly accessible, we're on the wrong track because God is love. [00:38:04]

I went down to the front desk of the hotel because I had finished my talk on the plane, so I emailed the manuscript to them, and they had said that they would print it off for me. And the woman at the desk said, yep, we'll do that, but there's a charge for everything over every page over five pages. [01:20:24]

Initially, I was thinking seriously, like how much does a page cost? Are you really going to charge me for that? Then I thought, don't be a jerk. So, I said sure, I understand, no problem. And she ran it off, and then she looked at it, and she said, you're spreading the word of God, no charge. [01:35:76]

It reminded me of those four movements that Dallas talks about of love, that God first loves us, and then we're able to love God, and then we can love other people, and then in the community of prayerful love, they love us. [01:56:71]

In the story of Jesus that means the most of me, he says that God is like a lovesick father, and that heart is always vulnerable. You were driving and you hear a song of an artist that you love, and you remember that it was a child who told you about that artist. [02:09:12]

The most beautiful version outside of the one Jesus told of his story of the prodigal son was written by Philip Yancey. Phillips memoirs came out this last year, but this particular version of the prodigal child is in Phillips book What's So Amazing About Grace. [02:42:80]

A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just outside Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, a bit old, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. [03:30:48]

She has visited Detroit only once before on a bus trip with a church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Because the newspapers in Traverse City report and lura details the gangs and drugs and violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that it's probably the last place her parents will look for her. [03:56:72]

The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with a big car, she calls him boss, teaches her a few things that men like. Since she's underage, men pay a premium. She lives in a penthouse or is room service. Occasionally she thinks about the folks at home. [04:36:88]

After a year, the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. These days we can't mess around, he growls, and before she knows it, she's out on the streets without a penny to her name. [05:13:60]

She pulls her leg tight underneath her and shivers under the newspaper she's piled on top of her cold. Something jolts a synapse of memory, and a single image fills her mind of May in Traverse City when a million cherry trees bloom at once with a golden retriever dashing through the rows. [06:08:00]

There in the concrete walls and plastic chairs bus turtle in Traverse City stands a group of 40 brothers and sisters and great aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and a great-grandmother to boot. They are all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise makers. [08:57:36]

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