Can you imagine the courage it took to love so deeply that you would walk the way of the cross? The cross unleashes courageous love…isn’t that a love that you need to know today?

• – The kind of love that will go to bat for you if when it costs…
• – The kind of love that won’t walk away when it’s hard and scary…
• – The kind of love that will even be willing to die for you…

There are a lot of images, a lot of metaphors in the Bible that are used to describe the love of God…

Psalm 103:11 is an astronomy metaphor… “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.”  Some of you star gazing, astronomy loving, physics type people just perked up. You’re mentally getting out your telescope and calculations. 186 miles a second for a year to get a light year…multiplied by 63,000 to get to the closest star…and you’re thinking wow… that’s some love…as high as the heavens are above the earth.

Then there is the nursing mother metaphor that comes from the OT and the NT…an image that is somewhat harder for me to relate to…except that my wife has nursed all four of our children…and there is just something in the eyes of a nursing mother that expresses an almost incomprehensible depth of love.

Then there is the Father image…Psalm 103:13, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.”  Few things thrill me more than those moments when I encounter head-on that stirring of father-love in my heart. When I get a “I’m-not-looking-for-anything-from-you-no-holds-barred-hug from one of my girls.” Or to see tears in my guys eyes — okay they were younger then — when we were saying goodbye at the airport.

Maybe none of those images of God’s love really grab you…but how about the metaphor of a friend. John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that one would lay down his life for his friends.” The extreme love of our friend Jesus gave him the courage to die for us. You can doubt a lot of things about God…but when Jesus went to the cross…he settled forever my question…”Are you my friend? Do you love me?”

That’s a love I need to know. I need to be able to love like that but I need to be loved like that.  In the permanent record of his words, God has told us time and time again that he loves us… and he has used a variety of illustrations in the hopes that one of those stories would resonate with the deepest chords of your heart.

But every story, every illustration, every metaphor was simply a pre-view of the real deal…the cross.  The cross is God’s love unleashed, let loose in the world.  Let God’s love loose in your heart.