Max Lucado - 3:16 June 30, 2010

The Greek word for “one and only” is monogenes, an adjective compounded of monos (“only”) and genes (“species, race, family, offspring, kind”).  When used in the Bible, “one and only” almost always describes a parent-child relationship.  Luke employs it to identify the widow’s son; “the only son of his mother” (Luke 7:12).  The writer of Hebrews states: “Abraham…was ready to sacrifice his only son, Isaac” (11:17 NLT).  John enlists the phrase five times, in each case highlighting the unparalleled relationship between Jesus and God.

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 29, 2010

Everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
            Matthew 7:8 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 28, 2010

Everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven.
            Matthew 10:32 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 27, 2010

Others [put you down].  God claims you.  Let the definitive voice of the universe say, “You’re still a part of my plan.”

 Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 26, 2010

Take in with all the Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love.  Reach out and experience the breadth!  Test its length!  Plumb its depths!  Rise to the heights!  Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
            Ephesians 3:18-19 The Message


Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 25, 2010

Mark it down: God loves you with an unearthly love.  You can’t win it by being winsome.  You can’t lose it by being a loser.  But you can be blind enough to resist it.  Don’t.  For heaven’s sake, don’t.  For your sake, don’t.
Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 24, 2010

This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
            John 15:12 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 23, 2010

I bow my knees before the Father…that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
            Ephesians 3:14, 16-19 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 22, 2010

[God] speaks through the immensity of the Russian plain and the density of the Amazon rain forest.  Through a physician’s touch in Africa, a bowl of rice in India.  Through a Japanese bow or a South American abraco.  He’s even been known to touch people through paragraphs like the one you are reading.  If he is touching you, let him.

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 21, 2010

My dog Salty…sleeps next to me…as I write.  He’s a cranky cuss, but I like him….  He didn’t have much to start with, now the seasons have taken his energy, teeth, hearing, and all but eighteen-inches worth of eyesight….  He’s nervous and edgy, quick to growl, and slow to trust.  As I reach out to pet him, he yanks back.  Still, I pet the old coot….

We are a lot like Salty….  For all our chest pumping and braggadocio, we are an anxious folk; can’t see a step into the future, can’t hear the one who owns us.  No wonder we try to gum the hand that feeds us.  But God reaches and touches.

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 20, 2010

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
            Galatians 5:22-23 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 19, 2010

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life.  Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom.  Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows.  For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself.  That’s an act of true freedom.
            Galatians 5:13-14 The Message

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 18, 2010

Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents.  Mostly what God does is love you.  Keep company with him and learn a life of love.  Observe how Christ loved us.  His love was not cautious but extravagant.  He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us.  Love like that.
            Ephesians 5:1-2 The Message

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 17, 2010

Rejoice, be made complete, be comforted, be like-minded, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.
            2 Corinthians 13:11 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 16, 2010

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.
            John 15:13 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 15, 2010

Love explains why he came.

Love explains how he endured.

His hometown kicked him out.  A so-called friend turned him in.  Hucksters called God a hypocrite.  Sinners called God guilty.  Do termites mock an eagle, tapeworms decry the beauty of a swan?  How did Jesus endure such derision?  “For God so loved….”

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 14, 2010

I, the Lord Your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
            Exodus 20:5-6 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 13, 2010

The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery….  Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments.
            Deuteronomy 7:7-9 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 12, 2010

Peek through the Nazareth workshop window.  See the lanky lad sweeping the sawdust from the floor?  He once blew stardust into the night sky.  Why swap the heavens for a carpentry shop?  One answer: love.

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 11, 2010

Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith…be strong.  Let all that you do be done in love.
            1 Corinthians 16:13-14 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 10, 2010

He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.
            2 Corinthians 5:15 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 9, 2010

Look at the round belly of the pregnant peasant girl in Bethlehem.  God’s in there; the same God who can balance the universe on the tip of his finger floats in Mary’s womb.  Why?  Love.

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 8, 2010

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
            1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 7, 2010

Our finest love is a preschool watercolor to God’s Rembrandt, a vacant-lot dandelion next to his garden rose.  His love stands sequoia strong, our best attempts bend like weeping willows.

Max Lucado 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 6, 2010

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
            1 Corinthians 13:1-3 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 5, 2010

Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
            Romans 8:38-39 NASB

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 4, 2010

“Pop”…was struggling with metastatic liver and lung cancer….  Then he learned that his only son, Dan, was going to be a father.  When Pop heard the news, he…resolved, “I’m gonna make that.”…  Some days it was all he could do to mumble, “Bad day” to those who phoned.  But when his granddaughter was born, he insisted on going to the hospital….  Pop’s arms were too weak, so Dan had to hold the baby for him.  But Pop did what he came to do.  He leaned over, kissed her, and said, “Sheila Mary, Grandpa loves you very much.”  Within seconds, Pop dozed off….  Within days he was dead.  What is this love that endures decades, passes on sleep, and resists death to give one kiss?  Call it agape love, a love that bears a semblance of God’s.

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 3, 2010

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) and hate your enemy.”  But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
            Matthew 5:43-45 NKJV

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 2, 2010

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?”  “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”  Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”  Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me?”  He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”  Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”  The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”  Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?”  He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”  Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”
            John 21:15-17

Max Lucado – 3:16

Max Lucado - 3:16 June 1, 2010

I saw a shard of…love [like God’s for us] between an elderly man and woman who have been married for fifty years.  The last decade has been marred by her dementia.  The husband did the best he could to care for his wife at home, but she grew sicker, he older.  So he admitted her to full-time care.  One day he asked me to visit her, so I did.  Her room was spotless, thanks to his diligence.  She, horizontal on the bed, was bathed and dressed, though going nowhere.  “I arrive at 6:15 a.m.,” he beamed.  “You’d think I was on the payroll.  I feed her, bathe her, and stay with her.  I will until one of us dies.”  Agape love.

Max Lucado – 3:16