Ross Stackhouse - October 5, 2025
Because of This Love, vol. 4: Honesty Is a Must
There is no escaping evil and trauma in this world. Though God is pure goodness and love–from before the beginning of the world to beyond the end of it–it’s hard to see it, feel it, believe it when evil seems to be waiting around every corner. When we’ve experienced great pain, it’s natural for us to want to numb, escape, or act out–to ultimately make things fester. There’s another possibility that strangely can lead us toward a powerful recovery experience of this intense love that God has for his people. That possibility is telling the God's honest truth about what we think and feel straight to God, to scream it if we must.
From Series: "Because of This Love"
1 Peter 4:8 tells its readers "to keep this intense love among you." That adjective–translated here to “intense”–occurs only here. The verb that shares the same root means “to stretch” such as when Jesus stretches out his hand to heal. This is the love we’re trying to recall and recover in this series. From the beginning and even before the beginning, God’s character has been purely that of love and goodness. God’s drive to create life–from the big bang to the consciousness of humankind crowned with glory and grandeur (Psalm 8)–was out of an intense love and desire to extend love, power and glory to created things. But a hallmark feature of the world in which we live and our existence in it is that it is so easy to miss or forget God’s intense love. In this coming weeks, our goal is to reach into our souls, our experiences, our Scriptures, into God’s heart as revealed in Jesus to recover what we’ve lost: this love that covers practically everything (Eugene Peterson’s translation of 1 Peter 4:8).
