Are you the sinner-in-touch-with-your-sin or Simon-in-denial?
In helping you to answer that question, I want to make a few points you should keep in mind. Today, this:
God loves you and wants to forgive you — and you can’t do a thing about it.
God is going to go loving you and longing to forgive you, even if you refuse — for whatever reason.
And that’s good news. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. We can delay the gift. We can make it difficult for God to get to us. We can say to ourselves that we don’t need God’s love or forgiveness. We can compare ourselves with other sinners beat ourselves up over the sins we can name, or just convince ourselves that we are just plain unlovable. But that is not going to put God off.
God is in the love and forgive business.
I had a student years ago whose mother told her in a hundred and one ways she was unlovable and unforgiveable. Her mother had two boys and, then, finally, her daughter. The girl was the focus of her mother’s aspirations — for a mother-daughter relationship, for frilly dresses and bright pink everything.
But Ellie was born into a house dominated by two brothers and a father who lived easily, laughed, loved, fished, hunted, and played football. So, not surprisingly, Ellie wanted to be a part of the action.
Instead of going along, her mother’s disappointment hardened into brittle disapproval and Ellie felt it all. By the time she was a young woman she had internalized her mother’s message: you are ugly, you are unlovable, you are a disappointment, you are unforgiveable.
For Ellie it wasn’t just what she did that made her unlovable, it was who she was that was unlovable. And nothing her father, brothers, or even her husband told her could fill the chasm her mother’s hurtful messages had created.
It was only, when with the help of a spiritual director that she could name the things that had driven her, forgive her mother for the hurt that she had caused her, and release the hatred in her own heart that had grown in response, that God’s love and forgiveness broke through.
But whether it is who you are, or what you have done that is the obstacle, there is nothing that can keep God from loving you.
Fred, your words are very inspiring and help me get my arms around concept that “God is Love.” So – could I ask? Without God love would not exist?
Thanks to our Heavenly Father we will never have to know what it might be like to be in this world without love. All creation speaks of His love.
Yesterday while watering the plants in front yard with my grandson who was all intent to do the watering by himself as he is with all chores – he is the one who can do everything. I suppose that is the 4 year old syndrone.
Anyway, he said: “Gramy, Gramy, look: a butterfly.” It was a really large one. The colors were brown, tan, black and had some spots which I don’t remember the colors. Seeing the world through a child’s eyes makes me appreciate even more the wonderfulness of our Lord! He created everything perfectly.
God so loved us that He sent Jesus to die for us. We can’t be forgiven without Jesus. And we can’t know love without Jesus.
The childlike wonder of running under a watering hose and listening to his laughter reminds me that Jesus said we all had to be like a little child to enter the kingdom of heaven.
My prayer is that the Lord will renew me afresh in His wonders which seem so natural with my grandson~