Receiving and Responding to God’s Amazing Love
By Leslie Ludy

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
Romans 12:1
Several decades ago at a gathering of Christian believers in Ethiopia, hundreds of believers were challenged to send someone from among them to reach the unreached tribes in their country with the Gospel; tribes where nobody else had been able to go for generations.
It was a dangerous task — whoever chose to go would be trekking for days over difficult terrain to get to extremely remote areas. The tribes they wanted to reach were fierce warriors who were well-known for killing all outsiders who dared to approach their territory.
It was not an easy decision. Anyone who said yes to the call to go would very likely lose his or her life in the process. The Ethiopian believers pondered the seemingly impossible situation and wondered who among them would be the most likely candidate to succeed in this dangerous mission.
As they were discussing and praying about the situation, a young man named Fanta stood up in the crowd and declared that he felt called by God to go and reach these violent people.
Almost immediately, the leaders of the convention told Fanta to sit down. He was the last person who would be qualified for this extremely dangerous mission. Fanta had been crippled since childhood. A childhood illness had left him with a withered, useless left arm and leg. They just hung at his side. To move, Fanta stood on his right leg and moved his stick ahead one pace. Then he hopped forward dragging his left leg, and when he caught his balance, he did it again, and then again. It was a painfully slow and tedious process.
Richard McLellan, a missionary to Ethiopia and one of the men leading that gathering, later wrote:
We wanted strong men who could walk hundreds of kilometers over rough mountain trails. Without stopping to think or pray, I moved over to the young man and [said] that Fanta could not be a missionary. I suggested that he could have a ministry of prayer.
But Fanta’s response was nothing short of amazing:
“I am ready to go. God’s Word burns in my heart. I want to go to the cattle herders along the Bilate River and near Lake Abaya. I know they are enemies of [our people] but they need Jesus too. God has called me to go to them. Please … send me.”
Richard went on to inform him that this tribe had murdered the last evangelist who tried to go there, but Fanta was undeterred and seemingly unafraid, even though he knew he wouldn’t be able to run away from danger, nor could he stand and fight.
Fanta remained resolute: “God has told me to go, so I must obey,“ he said. He asked me to pray for him and also to intercede with the elders again on his behalf. Then slowly he hopped away on his stick.
Though none of the Christian leaders would think of sending Fanta to this remote unreached tribe, Fanta was so confident that God had called him that he decided to go on his own.
For the average person, the journey would have taken two days to walk across difficult terrain. It took Fanta five long, painful days to get there, hobbling along with his stick. He often fell and sustained cuts and bruises, and he had to scrounge for food along the way.
When he finally arrived to the area where the tribes lived, he knew that if they wanted to kill him, he would be an easy target. But he was not afraid. If the savage warriors killed him, he knew he would go to be with his Lord.
As he approached the fierce-looking tribal warriors, something unusual happened. These men had always immediately killed any outsider they saw, no questions asked. But as soon as they caught sight of Fanta, they treated him with respect. They carried him into their village and offered him food.
Amazingly, this violent tribe had a custom of honoring cripples.
Richard McLellan described what happened:
Maybe there had been, in generations past, an awful epidemic — polio maybe — that had left many people in the tribe as cripples. None of the other tribes in that area seemed to have any [disabled] children around [as it was tradition to] leave them to die, usually of starvation.
Directed by the Spirit of God, Fanta had found the only tribe where he could safely go and no one else could! The tribe actually accepted, welcomed and respected him. It was no problem for him to live among them. …The Lord powerfully blessed his witness and he started churches in five villages!
Within a year at least 250 people had believed the Gospel and accepted Christ as their Saviour. Many of them came to the next [missionary] convention with Fanta and I met them there.
They came singing chants of praise to Jesus Christ. They all walked slowly to keep pace with their leader who hopped along on one leg and a stick.
Today [in that tribe] there are more than 20 churches.
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Fanta’s story is truly miraculous and inspiring. It causes me to ask the question: What motivated him to love so sacrificially? What compelled this man to hobble alone through rugged wilderness terrain for five days, let alone reach a group of savage warriors with the Gospel, when nobody else believed he could even make it there in the first place?
Love was the motive. Not a human, emotional love. It was the very love of God flowing through the life of a consecrated, surrendered Christian. Fanta’s story is a vivid picture of God’s agape love. Agape love is not an emotion — it is a choice. It is a verb — an action word. It is a love that places the needs of others above our own. It is a love that will not back down, no matter how many obstacles or impossibilities stand in its way. It is a love that will sacrifice everything to reach someone whom the world considers worthless, unlovely, and not worth saving.
Fanta is not the only Christian who has made this kind of seemingly outrageous decision. In fact, countless Christians throughout history have chosen to boldly go where others refused; to risk their lives and sacrifice their own dreams in order to share a message of hope with a lost and dying world.

Mary Slessor, a missionary to Africa in the mid-1800s, willingly put herself in extreme danger in order to take the Gospel to places most other missionaries would not even think of going. Her biography states:
Here all the superstitions and barbarous customs of paganism were practiced … belief in demons was universal, witchcraft and poisoning humans as punishment was practiced everywhere. Human sacrifices were offered on the river bank for success in fishing. When twin children were born they were buried alive or exposed in the woods, while the unfortunate mother was driven into the bush or even killed … When chiefs or other great men died their wives were buried alive with them, while their slaves were [violently killed] and thrown into the grave.
To these hideous customs were added the horrors of incessant warfare, of slavery and slave-raiding which made the whole area a veritable hell of degradation…
But the horrors of heathenism did not terrify her, since from earliest childhood she had been in contact with vice and sin. She worked each day, subsisting on native food, drinking unfiltered water, getting drenched with rain, and doing everything that might have killed an ordinary person.
Each day she scoured the woods to find babes exposed and mothers beaten and expelled from the tribal town. These she would bring to the compound, and though by doing this blessed work, she violated every tribal custom, no one dared to interfere with her or harm those whom she sheltered in the compound. It was her love of the work that made her so overpoweringly bold. She dearly loved the African people for Christ’s sake.
There were other missionaries to different parts of Africa who went after Mary Slessor’s time. Headway was being made for the Gospel, but that part of the world was still known as “The White Man’s Grave.” The survival rate among missionaries who came from other parts of the world was very low due to disease, difficult conditions, and violence.
But there was a need for those who would give up their lives for the Gospel. So Christians began to answer the call. Instead of packing their belongings in the typical luggage or trunks of that time, they began to pack them into coffins — because they knew they were not coming home.
One account says, “…most missionaries headed to this part of the world would typically pack their possessions in their own coffin. They would say good byes to loved ones to board a ship with the realization that they most likely would come home horizontally and not vertically. Still they pressed on with a God given sense of urgency.”4
They committed their lives to share the love of Christ for as long as they could survive. Here is an excerpt from one missionary’s diary, attesting to the desire to reach lost people. He wrote this during his final days on earth as he was dying of malaria:
August 9, 1894:
Written in view of my approaching end, which has often lately seemed so near but just now seems so imminent and I want to write while I have the power to do it.
Well Glory to God! He has enabled me to make a hard fight for the Sudan and although it may seem like a total failure and defeat it is not! We shall have the victory and that right speedily. I have no regret for undertaking this venture and in this manner my life has not been thrown away.
And, as one group of missionaries would pass away, another group would come to replace them. Countries were transformed by the Gospel as a result. All because of the extraordinary, singular motive of love … God’s love.
A Love That Necessitates a Response
In some Christian circles that I’ve observed, God’s love is taken lightly. It is often used as a blanket to cover a self-focused, sin-filled “Christian” life. The mindset seems to be: “God loves us no matter what we do, so it doesn’t really matter how we live.”
And in other Christian circles, God’s love is made conditional upon the Christian’s performance. Believers live under a bondage of fear and legalism, adopting the mindset that God will withhold His love from them unless they adhere to a strict list of humanly concocted rules.
Both of these mindsets are counterfeits of God’s amazing love.
God’s love is the most powerful force in the universe. His love casts out all fear. His love never fails. His love always triumphs. His love is an everlasting love, an unfailing love. We sing about His love in worship songs, but do we really understand what we are singing about? Let’s look to what His Word declares:

Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it. Song of Solomon 8:7
Your steadfast love is better than life. Psalm 63:3 ESV
“For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but My steadfast love shall not depart from you, and My covenant of peace shall not be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you. Isaiah 54:10 ESV
But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 ESV
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13 ESV
“I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued My faithfulness to you.” Jeremiah 31:3 ESV
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. 1 John 3:1 ESV
This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 1 John 4:10 NIV
He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 1 John 4:8
And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. 1 John 4:16
But You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Psalm 86:15 ESV
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. Lamentations 3:22 ESV
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4:18
Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13:8
We can’t look that kind of awe-inspiring, sacrificial, unfailing, never-ending love in the face and take it lightly or use it as an excuse to live however we want.
And we also can’t look that kind of love in the face and believe that we need to add to His sacrifice by living under a bondage of legalism.
When we understand God’s perfect love, our entire lives should change.
We should gladly adopt a mindset that says, “My life is no longer my own. I have been bought with a price, therefore, it is my greatest delight to glorify God in all that I do.” (See 1 Corinthians 6:20.)
When we come face to face with the extraordinary, awe-inspiring reality of God’s love, it necessitates a response on our part — a response of awe and gratitude, a response that willingly offers all that we are to the One who gave everything for us because of His amazing love.
This is summed up beautifully in Romans 12:1, which I will share in multiple translations in order to more clearly emphasize the point this verse is making:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Romans 12:1 NKJV
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship. Romans 12:1 NIV
Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies
[dedicating all of yourselves, set apart] as a living sacrifice, holy and well-pleasing to God, which is your rational (logical, intelligent) act of worship. Romans 12:1 AMP
In other words, it is only right, only reasonable, only proper, only logical that we respond to His love by giving Him everything we have to give. Not out of obligation, but out of love — just as He did for us.
As Scripture says,
We love Him because He first loved us. 1 John 4:19
And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. 1 John 4:16
We often look at total surrender or total consecration to our God as overly difficult or inconvenient. We often read stories about Christians like Fanta and assume those decisions are only for “extreme” believers. But God’s love for us was beyond extreme, beyond difficult, and beyond inconvenient. Offering our lives, our bodies as a living sacrifice to Him is not extreme — it is the reasonable, right, and loving response to the greatest love that has ever been or ever will be. Fanta’s story should not be unusual. Sacrificial givenness to Jesus Christ is the only reasonable response of any Christian who has encountered the extraordinary love of God. Are we willing to say yes to the One who gave everything for us?

This article was originally published in Issue 48.
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