Why Would God Love Me?

Read Tract

The EMT’s rushed a teenage boy into the ER where Dr. Tim Riesenberger works. Direct gunshot in the chest. Still on the gurney, his vitals drop to zero and his eyes roll back in his head. The bullet had gone right through his heart and there are only seconds to save his life.

Dr. Riesenberger immediately slashes open his chest and goes to work. He clamps the aorta to shunt the blood away from his lower extremities to his brain in a desperate attempt to preserve the boy’s life.

Seconds ticking, Dr. Riesenberger cracks open his rib cage, shoves his gloved hand into his chest, and applies CPR directly on his heart. It’s not enough. He shocks the heart directly, but he’s bleeding severely from multiple lacerations to his arteries. Dr. Riesenberger clamps another artery, then another. He calls for four units of type O negative blood. Then, four more units of O negative. Four more. Four more! He tells the blood bank to please stay ahead.

After the fortieth unit, the blood bank calls him and says, “Dr. Riesenberger there is no more O negative in this hospital.” As that announcement is made someone pushes past security, pushes past the nurses, and lays down on the gurney next to the boy. He pulls up his sleeve and says, “Doctor, I have O negative. Take as much as you need!”

Who do you think that was? It was the boy’s father. He hadn’t seen him in over five years since the teen ran away from home to join a gang, yet he still recognized him and was willing to give all his blood to save his wayward son.

Again we join Tim Riesenberger in the ER. The paramedics call in a report of a 15-year-old driver of a car that was T-boned at seventy miles an hour. He’s in critical condition, his heart is not beating, he’s not breathing, there’s no blood pressure. Amazingly everyone else in the car was unharmed. The paramedics are doing CPR, but they have been unable to intubate him due to massive facial trauma. ETA is five minutes.

Dr. Riesenberger calls neurosurgery and orthopedics, he gets the ventilator ready, he calls the blood bank for four units of blood, he gloves up, and puts his boots and face shield on. The paramedics are doing CPR as the patient is wheeled in. With each compression all in the room hear only, Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. All the ribs on his left side are broken.

They lay the boy down in front of Dr. Riesenberger. He manages to weave the endotracheal tube past all the fractures through the vocal cords, but when he turns on the ventilator a column of blood rises up and down in the tube. There’s no gas exchange. Dr. Riesenberger realizes he has to drain his lungs so they can inflate.

He slashes his chest open and puts in a chest tube. A quart of blood comes out. Then another. Then another. He clamps the tube and steps back—this boy will die. Someone in the corner of the room catches the look of realization behind the doctor’s mask and cries out, “No! No! Why wasn’t it me that was driving this morning instead of him?” Who was this person? It was the boy’s father. He was seated next to his son in the car, but survived. This father longed in that moment that they could have traded places.

What love is this that a parent would be willing to die in the place of their child? We are told, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16

God loves you, and for no other reason other than the simple fact that you are His child. Imagine if in those very moments in the ER when the child is torn from his parents, that Dr. Riesenberger says, “You’ll be fine. You have two other children left,” or “You are young, you can have another child and replace this one you lost.” It would sound heartless and absurd! Your heavenly Father yearns for you, for you are irreplaceable to Him.

As an earthly father can love his child so much as to give his own life to try to save him, Jesus has already given His life to save you. You may be a runaway, but God still recognizes you as His. He is right beside you when life crashes into you. No matter what you’ve done, He is doing everything to save you. Today, will you respond to God’s love and become His child forevermore? Tell your heavenly Father your desire now!

Would you like to learn more about this loving heavenly Father? Sign up for FREE Bible Studies at: JourneysUnscripted.com/BibleStudy

Listen to more of Dr. Tim Riesenberger’s harrowing experiences in the ER and how he’s seen God at work at: JourneysUnscripted.com/Tim