THE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE OF GOD by Ron Walters

It's the mother lode of scripture, the Hope Diamond of truth. It's Fort Knox in a book. And every week we're asked to stand in front and display its dazzling beauty: "I have loved you with a love that lasts forever, and with unfailing love I've drawn you to myself."

It's the story of God's immeasurable heart and incomparable love, offered without strings and paid in full to an undeserving and resistant people. No one could have devised such a plan...no one except God. It's so...like Him!

During the early years of his ministry, Dwight L. Moody was visiting churches in England when he met a young and eager preacher named Henry Moorhouse. Moody, in a polite but insincere gesture, invited Moorhouse to visit him: "If you should ever get to Chicago, come preach in my church." It was a glib comment. Moody never intended to surrender his pulpit to the Brit.

A month after Moody returned home, he got a telegram from Moorhouse: "Have just arrived in New York. Will be in Chicago on Sunday."

Moody was dumfounded and embarrassed. And, to make matters worse, he was scheduled to be elsewhere that same Sunday. Yet, he had made a promise.

Moody explained the situation to his church leaders and instructed them to allow Moorhouse "to preach one time. If the people enjoy him, put him on again."

A week later Moody returned from his trip. He inquired of his wife how the young Moorhouse had fared. "He was wonderful," she replied. "He's even better than you are. He told sinners that God loves them!"

"But that's wrong," Moody complained. "God does not love sinners!"

"Then you better go tell him yourself," she said, "because he's convinced that God does."

"You mean he's still here?" asked Moody.

"Yes," she said, "and he's been preaching every night since you left."

That evening, Moody went to the meeting and heard Moorhouse preach on The Unconditional Love of God. It was Moorhouse' sixth consecutive night in Moody's pulpit, and all six sermons were based upon the same text: "For God so loved the world..."

Moody was spellbound. For the first time he had been confronted with the enormity of God's grace, and the openness of His love. Moody's life and ministry were never again the same.

Fifty years later, songwriter Frederick Lehman was moved by the same truth. After reading and rereading "I have loved you with an everlasting love," Lehman wrote:

The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell, It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell. O love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong! It shall for evermore endure the saints and angel's song.

Oddly, the hymn's 3rd verse was written by a man the composer never met, Ben Isaac Nahorai. The unknown Nahorai had suffered for years from mental depression and was finally committed to an asylum. While there he too discovered the immense love of God. After Nahorai's death these words were found written on his asylum wall:

Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made, Were every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade, To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, Nor could the scroll contain the whole, tho' stretched from sky to sky.

The story of God's immeasurable love is what we've been chosen to tell. It's God's gift to mankind, and our privilege to deliver.