God's Deep Love For Us

Jason Cruise Founder Outdoor Ministry Network

The Man Minute- Sixty second investestments in Christ-Like manhood

November 4th the Lord added to the roster of Team Cruise by bringing us our second son, Tucker.
 
I'm forever amazed at how, through the birth of a child, a parent can instantly love someone so deep, so fast, and so full. It is a kind of love that must be experienced first person in order to be understood, and even then it is unexplainable.
 
It wasn't until I became a dad that I finally understood what it meant to be ready and fully able to give my life for another person. I would gladly exchange my life to insure that my two sons could keep theirs. Yet, in that same moment, I cannot find any reason to give either of my two sons lives for someone else. You can take me, my possessions, my money. Take whatever you want, but you cannot have my boys. Call me unloving, call me less than a Christian, call me whatever you want to call me. No person's life is worthy the death of either of my two sons.

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Tucker Cruise

My mind drifts to a night years ago when a mama held a baby in her arms, while a guy, just like me, looked on in speechless amazement. Thirty-three years later that same mom and dad would look in amazed disbelief watching just a few yards away as blood flowed out of His body, the same body that they once held in their arms. No pain is so great as that of watching your kids hurt from being injured. I cannot relate to the feeling Joseph must have felt standing there on the dirt of Calvary's hill. I cannot relate to the feelings going through the heart of God as He watched Jesus gasp for breath, all the while knowing that it was the both of them that blew breath into Adam. 

 
That night in the manger, the Heavenly Father, present there in the barn along with Joseph, knew the outcome for this pretty little baby boy. The Heavenly Father knew He would have to give up His boy if the whole world were to have access to forgiveness, for "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins."
 
It is love I do not understand, for the raw truth is that I am sure I would have let the whole sin-sick world suffer in order to save Cole or Tucker. To give His son is love of the deepest root, planted in the heart of a God who knew there was no other way.

I stand amazed in the presence. 
 
www.jasoncruisespeaks.com and www.outdoorministrynetwork.com

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