Does God really love me?
Yes! God IS love! He created you in His image and loves you as His child! He loves you unconditionally! Come and see!
Okay. Great.
But your ad here says that might not be true? At least not all the time. It seems to me from what I read that He might just be out to get me when I do something wrong.
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I can think of no better example of this misconception than a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago.
"I knew God was going to get me for what I had done," she told me with a frown. Her hands lay quietly in her lap, and she looked down.
She had done something years prior that she was very sorry for, and she had waited every day for God to react.
"And when my mom died, I thought--" she paused and let her mouth squirm in anguish, "--I thought, this is it. This is my punishment for what I did."
The two things--her "mess-up" and the untimely death of her mother--were not closely related at all. From an outside perspective, the two could have never been lumped together in the same category.
But in my friend's heart, she saw a clear line from A to B. God had found what was precious to her and had taken it from her as a punishment. And she accepted it as reality.
Do you fear God this way? I know I have.
It isn't so much that I was told explicitly that God would seek me out for my sins and destroy my life, but I was taught to fear Him. I read as a child of how God obliterated evil cities and groups of people, so why wouldn't He make me miserable for sinning, too?
And though I had subconsciously often operated out of fear in my walk with the Lord, I had never heard anyone say it out loud like she did that day, and hearing it felt like a knife to my heart.
Facebook is brimming with hateful comments from "Christians" out to terrify the unbelieving--and sometimes the believing.
God is going to get you, they say. Watch your step. You're going to be sorry. You're going to hell.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
At what point did someone going to hell become a "gotcha" moment in an argument? A fate we should wish upon no person whatsoever--and it rolls off of our tongues so effortlessly. And we do it with a self-satisfied, smug, holier-than-thou, I-hope-you-burn-for-eternity grin.
Friends, I beg of you to reconsider the way you speak to those who don't live as you do--whatever that looks like.
Stop insinuating that God only loves us when we're good.
Recently, Brooks took me to the GMA Honors Awards ceremony, where Russ Taff, a hit praise song composer and member of the Gaither Vocal Band, was being inducted into the Hall of Fame. And when he accepted his award on stage, he clutched the statue and paused before humbly referring to the unsavory childhood he experienced.
I'll never forget what he said.
"I had a lot of trauma as a kid...and you know, you experience religion and everything," he said, giving the statement a flippant gesture with his hand. But as he spoke his next words, he burst forth into tears, and he visibly swelled with joy. "And then, you meet Jesus. And he loves you when you're good, and he loves you when you're bad. He just loves you."
It's so simple.
He loves you when you're good, and he loves you when you're bad. He just loves you.
Why don't we know this better? Why don't we live this better?
God is not out to make you miserable. Yes, there can be natural, unpleasant consequences to choices we make, and He may often use uncomfortable things to draw us near to Him and to refine us, but God is never on a mission to ruin our lives. Never.
Do I believe that when we make selfish or hurtful decisions that go against His best for us that He sometimes allows us to have what we want (warts and all) so we'll feel the need for Him and what it's like to really be left to our own devices? Yes, I do. I believe He has tools that feel uncomfortable that He uses to correct us out of love.
But I don't believe we mess up and then He says, "Yikes. There it is, you fool. All right, your sister is getting it. Let me arrange a car wreck."
But don't we sort of believe this logic?
When something horrible and unpleasant comes your way (a la throwing up in the toilet from a stomach bug)--what tends to be our go-to reaction?
Bargaining with God?
Oh, God, if you'll just let it stop, I'll never do X, Y, or Z ever again.
Because our penchant is to believe that when something bad happens, it's because we did something bad to deserve it, and God is punishing us.
And part of that comes from the false advertising that God is a vicious tyrant. Yes, I believe God is just, and yes, I do believe there is a hell. But there is also a choice. And there is His gift of salvation. And there is unconditional love and grace.
We are told in the Bible that God didn't send Jesus to condemn us but to save us.
A hateful tyrant would have never offered His perfect Son as a free pass of survival. He made things perfect, we screwed it up, and He still said, "I can make this right. I can take care of things on my end. All you have to do is believe."
You are not a pawn in a divine, sadistic chess game. You are a perfectly loved child, and you deserve to believe that. When you're good, when you're bad, He loves you.
In reality, I do hope He gets you. I hope He finds you right where you are. I hope He shows you things you've never known before. I hope He gives you the best, most fulfilling life you deserve. I hope He shows you a love like you've never understood.
I hope He gets you, friend.
I hope He gets you in His arms.
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