The best love story

"The Bible is predominantly a love story," said chapel speaker Paul Dunk. "We have the Bible to tell us about God."

In 1 John 4:19 the apostle Paul writes that "we love because he first loved us," Dunk said. "We love God because he first loved us. He moved first and he is always moving towards us."

Dunk said after God created the world and humans sinned by trusting in ourselves, God immediately announced that he had a rescue plan.

"And this is glorious, because it sets the tone," Dunk said, reading from Genesis 3 and the crushing curse on the serpent.

The story continues in Genesis 4, when Cain kills Abel, he said. God punishes Cain, but also offers protection when the punishment "is greater than (Cain) can bear."

"The story is not 'don't be like Cain,' the story is about the love of God," Dunk said. "The story is that we ARE Cain."

But we don't think we are that bad, so we don't "embrace the cross daily," he said. We can easily see that the prisoners in a maximum security prison "need all the blood of Jesus, but we only need a sprinkle."

The result is that we think of the Bible as a checklist, and we try to live up to that list and worry about what we are going to do with our lives.

That's the way the world lives, Dunk said. But we don't need to impress God because God already loves us and saved us.

"There is no version of this where you have to clean yourself up enough so he can use you. God does not need you to clean yourself up so he can do something with your life.

"This is the beauty of the gospel. There is a God in heaven whose love for you is so deep you can wake up every morning with peace because of who he is and who he is for YOU."

The Bible reveals how much God loves us, he said. "We are called to bear fruit by waking up every day thankful for Jesus."

When we do that "watch and see how the power of Christ transforms you from the inside out."

A student praise team led us in singing "Holy, Holy, Holy,"  "The Stand" and "The Desert Song."