Precious Children in the Hands of a "Loving" God.

I remember being assigned to read the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God while in a composition class at Carmel Junior High School.  That sermon was written by theologian and preacher Jonathan Edwards in 1741.  The picture of God painted by this puritanical preacher was of an angry, spiteful and judgmental deity.  While reading this as a teenager, it definitely didn't inspire me to run into the arms of my beloved heavenly father.  Instead, this sermon caused me to want to hide from the one who loves me the most.  One paragraph in this sermon stated that "The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours."

    Although a classic piece of 1700's literature--Jonathan Edwards couldn't have been more wrong about the character of the God he proposed to speak about. 
    I think a lot of us have developed an opinion of God that to some extent is similar to the God that Jonathan Edwards spoke about. Life experiences have often soured us to the idea of having (or even wanting) a personal relationship with God.  We misinterpret hardship as God's displeasure and misinterpret loneliness or financial trauma as abandonment. A lot of these feelings are even more intense when going through trauma like a divorce.  Often the hurts and wounds that we have experienced in life color our ability to see God's true character and heart. Like trying to look at someone clearly through cataracts--what we wind up seeing is a hazy distortion of the reality. Jesus came so that we can know God fully and view him through clear lenses. God's heart for us is that he loves us like precious children. He knows all of our flaws and weaknesses yet loves us nevertheless.  He sent his beloved son, Jesus, so that we might understand his profound love and compassion for us.  It was our heavenly fathers biggest desire that through experiencing his love for us--we might be forever changed.  God wants our relationship with him to transform us into the people we were destined to be.  He wants us to live righteous lives--but that righteousness should flow out of our intimacy with God.  No matter how you are feeling right now or what you are going through--rest assured that you have a heavenly father that loves you. God knows what's going on in your life and yearns for you to call out to him in the hard times.  Even if you aren't quite sure how you feel about God or aren't even sure if you believe in him, it's ok. God believes in you, loves you deeply and earnestly desires for you to know him.  Below are a few verses that talk about who God is and how he feels about us.

1 John 4:9-11 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

 

John 13:34-35 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

Psalm 86:15 But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

Seeing people through the eyes of Jesus

I look back a few years ago at how easy it was for me to judge others in their hardship.  I had been a “Christ follower” since I was age 16—and in my strength I felt pretty good about my relationship with God.  I didn’t struggle with addictions and I lived a relatively righteous life (at least by my own standards).  Although I had the “appearance” of righteousness if you would have looked a little closer you would have noticed that my empathy for others was severely lacking.  I judged people so much by their appearance back then.  I remember as an immature High School student (and a new believer) chastising one of my Christian friends for “being worldly” when he got his left ear pierced.  Culturally in the 1980’s, guys having their ears pierced was not very common.  A decade later I got the opportunity to apologize to that friend for my judgment against him years earlier.  Interestingly enough, by that time I was the one with the pierced ears (Lol).  Years ago when I was extremely successful in business I would look around at men that were going through financial trauma and it was so easy to subconciously judge them in their hardship.  That was until the failure of one of my retail stores in 1999, left me 250k in debt.  I also remember in the past finding out a close friend of mine was getting divorced—and at that time it was easy for me to question his situation.  Maybe if they worked harder at making their marriage work, they could have avoided that trauma?  I judged their situation instead of trying to have compassion on the pain and loss they must be feeling.  Things have changed a lot with my perspective on divorce as well, after I saw the disintegration of my own marriage.  It’s taken my own personal failures, brokenness and hardship to help me truly begin to fathom God’s heart towards the hurting and weak.   Isn’t it interesting that during the years of Jesus public ministry one of the things that differentiated him from the other religious leaders and teachers of his era was his deep compassion for the hurting.  He showed compassion to the prostitutes and tax collectors instead of judging them.  He didn’t need to tell them that their lives were a mess—they already knew that.  He didn’t need to tell them they were living a debased/immoral lifestyle—they were also well aware of that fact.  He showed them compassion and it changed their lives.  A former prostitute (Mary Magdalene) became a leader in the early Christian community.  A former tax collector (who in that society had the social standing of a crack cocaine dealer) became one of his disciples and closest friends.  Jesus surrounded himself with the broken, abused, uneducated and people that society had little use for.  Jesus didn’t judge or castigate them—he loved them into righteousness.  His followers didn’t “look the part” of the religious establishment.  They were a rag tag bunch of social outcasts that wound up changing the society around them because of how they were first changed by Jesus.  The people that Jesus was harsh towards were the religious people, that had the appearance of having everything together, yet had no compassion towards the broken all around them.  These were the people that Jesus called “white washed tombs" and "vipers.” Recently one of the pastors at my church, Barry, gave a sermon where he talked about hanging out regularly at a local bar for the purpose of befriending people.  He was the “undercover pastor” listening to people share their hearts at the bar while he just sat there and drank his diet coke.  Barry would sit in the background non judgmentally listening to people and waiting for opportunities to help.  That is how I feel Jesus would be spending his time if he were physically walking the streets of Indianapolis.   You would find Jesus sitting on a street corner hanging out with the homeless man --nobody else realizing that this homeless man was a former military veteran suffering from PTSD.  You would find Jesus having dinner with the member of a local motorcycle gang.  Jesus would look past the man’s hard appearance and see the scared, abandoned little boy that lives beneath the heavily tattooed exterior.  Jesus would be praying with the young anorexic girl that cuts herself to mask the pain of her sexual abuse as a child.  He would be visiting the drug addict at the local jail, NOT as a ministry project, but because he was sincerely concerned for that man and his 3 small children.  That was what differentiated Jesus from the religious leaders around him—and that compassion is what should differentiate his followers as well.  Not simply how they look or dress, what their political beliefs are, how much scripture they can quote or how large of a Bible that they carry.  Like the scriptures say, “it’s the kindness of God that leads to repentance.”           

 "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:35).

“No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” – 1 John 4:12

“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.” - Augustine