The Strange and Wonderful Love of Christ
For a family church in West Michigan rooted in decades of faith, this truth never gets old — and it never should.
There is a love that defies every category we try to place it in. It isn't earned. It isn't withdrawn when we stumble. It doesn't grow cold when we go quiet. The love of Christ has a quality to it that the ancient writers could barely contain in language — and honestly, after all these years of walking with God, it still stops us in our tracks.
If you've been following Jesus for thirty, forty, fifty years, you haven't exhausted this love. You've only gone deeper into it. And if you're just beginning to look His direction, what's waiting for you is more than you've imagined.
A Love That Finds You Where You Are
The Gospel stories are full of moments where Jesus shows up in unexpected places — at the well, at the tax collector's table, on a shoreline at dawn, at a graveside where hope seemed finished. He doesn't wait for people to clean themselves up and come to Him. He moves toward them.
That's strange, by the world's measure. Love is usually conditional. You earn it, you maintain it, you can lose it. But what Christ offers isn't that kind of love. The Apostle Paul, writing to believers who had seen real suffering, called it a love that surpasses knowledge — something you experience before you can fully explain it (Ephesians 3:18–19).
For those of us who have walked with God through hard seasons — through loss, through illness, through the slow, faithful years when nothing looked spectacular — we know this is true. The love of Christ held us when we had nothing left to offer.
Strange to the World, Sure to the Soul
The world has a hard time making sense of this love. Grace is confusing to people who have lived by performance their whole lives. Forgiveness feels impossible to those who have only known accounts that stay balanced. And the idea that God would give His own Son so that broken people could be called His children — that sounds, frankly, too good to be true.
But this is the Gospel. Not a comfortable upgrade to a reasonable life. Not a spiritual strategy for self-improvement. It is the scandalous, undeserved, completely certain love of God poured out in the person of Jesus Christ.
There's a reason the old hymn writers couldn't stay quiet about it. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. They weren't writing marketing copy. They were recording a rescue. A real one. One they had experienced in their own bones.
What a Lifetime of Walking in This Love Looks Like
For those who have walked with God for decades, you know something that younger believers are still learning — this love is not an emotion you feel on good Sundays. It is a foundation that holds when everything else shifts.
You've prayed beside hospital beds. You've buried people you loved. You've watched children grow up and grandchildren arrive. You've had seasons when God felt near and seasons when the silence was heavy. And through all of it, this love did not leave you.
That's not a small thing to say. It's the testimony of a lifetime.
The love of Christ is strange because it outlasts our sin. It's wonderful because it never had to. He chose to love us, fully knowing what it would cost and who we were. That is not a love the world manufactures. It comes from somewhere else entirely.
An Invitation — Wherever You Are
Maybe you're reading this and you've known this love for decades. Let it be fresh again today. Don't let familiarity steal the wonder. The One who saved you hasn't changed. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).
Maybe you're reading this and you haven't fully stepped into this love yet — you've admired it from a distance, wondered if it's really for someone like you. It is. It always has been. There is room at the table, and the invitation is open.
At Outpouring Worship Center, we gather as a family church in West Michigan — people who have walked with God through every season of life, alongside people who are just beginning to find their way. We would love to have you with us.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna, Michigan.