Last summer, I sat on the beach, watching my children marvel at the ocean. They ran from the waves, giggling and splashing as the water overpowered them. Scanning the horizon, I tried to take in the vastness of the sea. My kids were just specks in comparison. How much more--in size and power--was the ocean!
The truth is that God's love and fatherly provision for us are as great as the ocean. And our worries and struggles, though they seem great, are just specks in comparison. How much more is His love than the troubles of this world!
I am fascinated by the "how much mores" of Scripture. Anytime I come across those words, I pay attention. I try to imagine the oceanic "how much more" overpowering sin, pain, and death in my own life:
He gives good things in ocean-sized abundance.
"If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him." (Matthew 7:11)
He provides for His children with ocean-sized care.
"Then he He said to His disciples, “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; nor about the body, what you will put on. Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing. Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn; and God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds?" (Luke 12:24)
"If then God so clothes the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith?" (Luke 12:28)
"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life."
"But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many." (Romans 5:9, 10, 15)
As far as sin and death and condemnation and wrath go, He has done it all; there is nothing left to do.
"For if the blood of goats and calves and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sactifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" (Hebrews 9:14)
Yes, you are you, with your weaknesses and failings. But how much more is He!
