06 Jul Series Five; Does God Only Love Me When We Good Things.
We had a beautiful time last Sunday learning about the Father heart of God. It was amazing to see the Holy Spirit working through the message to open our eyes to the love that God has lavished on us.
The question we explored was: “Does God only love me when I do good things?”
We started with an excerpt from the book “The Shack” – it is a great book to get your hands on if you have not yet read it. The main character Mack (or Mackenzie) finds himself lost in the woods when he comes across an abandoned shack. There, he meets God in the shack and documents his honest conversation with God. In the scene we read, Mack admits to God that he likes Jesus better than God because Jesus seems more gracious and God comes across as mean!
God responds by saying “But we are all in Him [Jesus]. He reflected my heart exactly. I love you and I invite you to love me.”
Religion often portrays God as a mean, angry and impersonal being. No wonder people walk away and hide from Him! But God is a God of relationship– not rules and religion. Jesus Christ reflected God’s heart when He loved unconditionally.
Mack asks God “why do you love a screw up like me?” The song Amazing Grace says it so well: “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me..” We are all wretched and are saved only by His loving grace.
God loves us because He is Love. That is the essence of His nature. He is so good and so loving that He will go to any length to cover us and save us not just from our sin but from ourselves. He gave up His greatest treasure, Jesus Christ, to ensure that we do not live in separation from Him. Our sins separate us from God who is holy. Jesus Christ took the punishment for those sins so that we may be united with our loving Father. John 3:16 says this “For this is how God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son [Jesus Christ], so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” Let the grandeur of that gesture sink into your heart and you will begin to really understand His awesome love for you.
God is love – that is who He is. He spells out this perfect love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-17: God’s love is patient and kind towards us. His love is protective of us and He goes to great lengths to protect His own. His love is not boastful or proud or rude – He gives us free will and does not impose His love on us. His love is not easily angered – in fact God is rich in mercy and slow to anger. He keeps no record of wrongs – the sacrifice of Christ dealt with all our sins – past, present and future! His love does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever truth wins because He is the defender of the defenseless. His love never, ever, ever gives up on us. He doesn’t lose faith in us or stop hoping we will be transformed. In fact, even if it takes as 100 times to get it right, He is there with loving arms and huge smile cheering us on, believing in us.
God is consistently pursuing us. He pursued Adam and Eve when they sinned against Him in the garden of Eden and He is still in the business of pursuing us today.
God’s love is not dependent on whether we are good or bad. He loves us because HE IS LOVE.
And He loves us too much to allow us to stay the same. We may come in as scre- ups but His love transforms us into sons and daughters. We start to look more and more like our Papa God. Sometimes the transformation is easy. Sometimes we get disciplined and it can feel hard. But believe it or not, discipline is a proof of his love because a good Father disciplines. Hebrews 12:6 says that God disciplines those He loves. Discipline means removing habits, patterns, reactions and sins that do not conform to who we are as children of God. And as we are transformed we become more and more like our Papa God!
Isn’t He lovely? Yes He is!
Feel free to share your thoughts with us here! See you on Sunday!
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