"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised— who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,"For your sake we are being killed all the day long;we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 8:31-39
Do you believe that the Father in heaven loves you? Do you have the assurance that there is nothing that you can do to change the love that He has for you? Will God still love you if you sin against Him? Will He love you if you fail? What if you do not perform to His standards? Do you feel that you have to work and perform to earn His love for you? Does you inner self feel as if you are in a futile quest to win His love no matter what you do? Do you feel that you have done things that can never be forgiven by Him? Do you feel at best that the Father in heaven tolerates you but does not really like you? Will He love you if you don't love him? Does God's love for you change when you don't feel or have the assurance that He loves you?
I must confess that these are very difficult questions to ask yourself, much less to answer in honesty and truthfulness. They are to painful and radical for Christians to be willing to face for several reasons. First, because theologically most Christians know that the Bible explicitly teaches us that God is a loving God and He loves us freely and unconditionally. I have found it easier to teach, say, and tell others that we believe these things than to really believe these things. Secondly, because it seems so inappropriate and painful to say to yourself, much less to others that you really do not believe or feel that God loves you. It is easier to just go on with your life. You will not do well in the Christian culture with those kind of beliefs. Thirdly, we can fill our lives with so much activity and busyness that we never take the time to ask these kind of questions. Finally, because we live in a world that does not love. The world tells us that to receive love it must be earned, achieved, performed for. We live in a very legalistic world. We learn this legalism modeled and demonstrated at home in our childhood, in our marriages with our spouses, at the workplace with our bosses or competing fellow workers, in our relationships, and sadly at times, in the body of Christ.
Think about the hidden but blatant ways we communicate or are told the way we will be loved in this legalistic world? "Perform for me and I will love you." "Fulfill my expectations and you will be loved." Do what I say and I will love you." "Fail and I will not love you." "I will love you if you do this." "I will love you when you do this." "Because of what you did, I will never love you."
Do you see this dear reader? Does this remind you of the way you have lived your life? Are you performing hoping to find and be loved by others? By God?
Do you today you feel like are you the performing worker? The performing spouse? The performing Christian? The performing son or daughter? It is a very lonely place to be? Will I ever be good enough? Should I work harder? Should I pretend I am someone I am not or others want me to be?
Stepping away from the ministry for a season I am seeing that I have often felt like the performing pastor. Would my church love me if I failed? What if I was weak? What if I sinned? What if they knew my weaknesses? What if I did not fulfill their expectations? Will they still love me? Will they stand with me? Will they stay with me? I have often times feared and felt others disapproval over me. It is a lonely place to live. If you always feel you have to perform you either try harder or give up. I have often felt that if I wasn't the hardest working, most available, busiest pastor I would not be pleasing to God and others. I think there is a deep longing in our soul to be loved for who they are not for what we do.
I had a wonderful epiphany in Romans 8 the other day. I have not been happy with my feelings of uselessness, dullness, directionless, no vision, no goals, little desire, no energy, brokenness, and empty, desperate prayers. It saddened me the sorry state that I was in. I felt that God was very disappointed with me in my relationship with Him, my spirituality, my life and all that it encompassed. With those feelings came a deep darkness and hopelessness that led to despair.. I sank to a place where I felt that if God was so very against me. At best He tolerated me, but was not to happy with me. Then I felt, if God does not love me. Then what do I have?
The apostle Paul wrote that "God is for us" and that "neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." It really struck me. At this very moment in my low state the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul is saying GOD IS FOR ME! Not only that, he says that NOTHING can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Think about that. NOTHING!!!! No dangers, problems, conflicts, failures, sins, guilt, regrets, mistakes, imperfections. NOTHING can separate me from the love of God! Being dull, burned out, scared, broken, doubting, questioning, disappointed, defeated, fearful, discouraged, worried, anxious, joyless, selfish, and prideful will not separate me from the love of God. Being an imperfect pastor, husband, parent, friend, and son of God will not separate me from the love of God!
This is the promise of God for me and for you dear Christian. It is the promise that can turn your sorrow to joy; your loneliness to communion; your timidity to boldness; you slavery to freedom; your hell to heaven; and your death to abundant living. It is the truth that will set you free and transform your life..
GOD LOVES YOU UNCONDITIONALLY AS HIS SON AND DAUGHTER.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PERFORM TO EARN HIS LOVE.
HE LOVES YOU WHEN YOU ARE GOOD AND WHEN YOU ARE BAD.
HE IS NOT DISAPPOINTED WITH YOU.
HE LOVES YOU AND WANTS TO LOVE YOU.
So what I am learning to do is to let Him love me. To surrender and receive His love. To renounce all paradigms of performance and simply accept this reality; savor it, cherish it, and believe it.
For some of us, this is not an easy thing; especially f you have not really believed that He loves you. It is a wonderful thought to believe that God loves me in my weakness of faith, my fears about the future, the cluelessness i have about His will for my life, my sadness, misery, and brokenness. God loves me even when I am not nor am I able to love Him in return. Nothing will separate me from that love.It has begun in me a whole experience of living in the reality that even if nobody else loves me, I am not alone, for the Father loves me unconditionally, period, exclamation point! Nothing can and will ever change that reality. AMEN!
A Prayer
Father in Heaven; I humbly come before you as Your adopted Son, blood bought by your beloved Son Jesus Christ. I renounce all attempts to win Your love, earn Your love, and perform in order to receive Your love and others love. Help me by and through Your love and grace to receive Your unconditional love at this moment. May my life be an ongoing experience of letting go of anything that is not based upon the truth of Your unconditional love and receiving an ongoing touch and filling of Your love in my heart, soul, will, and mind. May the experience of Your unconditional love make me a person who lives, and loves others with Your unconditional love. May others be free in my presence to not feel that they have to perform to earn my love. May they simply know by being around me your love for them today and all the days of my life. In Jesus name AMEN!
2 comments:
Dear Pastor Bill,
Thank you for your insightful words of Gods unconditional love.
Gods agape love is selfless and unconditional. He doesn't love us because we are lovable but because He is so loving. Bible says, "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" 1 John 4:10. If He insisted that we prove ourselves worthy of His love, we would fail miserably. But God's love is a choice He makes completely on His own. Its something we receive from Him and then share with others. "We love, because He first loved us" 1 John 4:19 Love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love. May you continue to recieve His love and share it with others..
Blessing to you
Watch the movie the Blind Side. The Lord used this movie to show me an living example of unconditional love, as shown by the Tuohy family to Michael. Not only was he adopted, they then called him son, just like he now was of the same substance as them!!
And is not this the same with us?
Are we not of the same substance of God in our New Me? This is something that Satan does not want us to know. He will tell us we still have to "do something" to get right or stay right with God... Yet is all has been done already for and there in us. It is a reality, wether we believe it or not. But by Faith, in surrender of our heart He can reveal into our minds, what is already in our Hearts. Oh what love this is!! There is really nothing else in the whole biblical story that is above this.
Amazing Grace is not a theological concept, by the Life of God now in us as our life.
Keep growing in Grace, and you might start see alot of error from what men have told you about it, or even what you have thought about it yourself. For is is Jesus plus Nothing. It set us free of our up and down emotions and feelings and anchors us into the Heart of God. A Heart that loves us and loves us and that we will be entranced with for all eternity in this Love. Yet we can be entranced in this Romance starting NOW. God bless you brother as you grow in Knowing this God that love you soooo much!!
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