The Hardest Thing For Me To Do

I've been reading in the book of Psalms recently and I have been stuck on one particular chapter.

When I say "stuck", I mean that I find it difficulty to just keep reading on because the content of of one chapter just keeps rattling in my brain. Even more than that, it's rocking my world as to how I think God thinks and feels about me; actually, about all of us.

Now, maybe you're not like me & maybe you live completed convinced all the time that God absolutely adores you. Maybe you have soooo fully embraced His grace that no matter what you do, no matter how many times you mess up, no matter what vengeful thoughts you have, lustful desires you cave to, or angry things you say to your spouse; you are confident in God's abundant love for you.

OR, maybe you're more like me, and you have had a difficult time REALLY believing and embracing God's pure & unmeasured love for you. Then, to make it more difficult, every time you "mess up", you feel like you and God just took two steps back, & now you have to work hard to get His love level for you back up.

This is how we relate to each other as people

No, matter how good the friendship or relationship, truth is, none of us know how to fully love without strings or agenda or without giving "pay backs" when something gets messed up in the relationship. And here's where it gets spiritually messy, we tend to assume that God relates to us the same ways that people do.

I have long felt like a guy who barley ever "gets it right", and as such I am prone to think that people are usually disappointed in me or are just a skip away from being disappointed in me. Then when I really mess up, I'm certain that they are going to take out a withdraw from their bank of love for me. Now, here's where that leaps into the way I experience God.

I tend to believe God relates to me this same way

Over the last two weeks my daughters have both gotten pink eye & even thought they are over it now, the process of giving them their medicine drops was CRAZY!!

They fought me every single time. It got to the point that I had to pin them down, pull their eyes open, and squeeze the drops in while they SCREAMED! I guess I could have thought...

• Don't you see that I'm helping you
• Hold still, you're being ridiculous, grow up & get control of yourself
  
• What, you don't trust me that I know best; stupid child
  
• If you kick me one more time then you're on your own
  
• I love you BUT after that behavior, I need my space for a while, please leave me alone.
  
• This behavior totally comes from your mom's side of the family! :)
  

But instead, I held them during their rage, AND I held them after it. I loved them the same when they were kicking me, as I did when they were sitting in my lap reading a story before bed saying, "daddy, I love you".

See, my love for them IS NOT contingent on their behavior or even their love for me.

David, the author of Psalms says in chapter 73 verse 22,

"I was senseless and ignorant, I was a brute beast before you"

I don't know about you but "senseless, ignorant beast" seems to describe me pretty well sometimes, ok, many times.

Whether it's my attitude, my sin, my failures to love my wife sacrificially, my "foot in mouth" with a friend, my doubting that God is both good & in control, the list goes on... I am aware that I am a work in progress and that I mess up a lot. But my method of relating with God has often been, "ok, I'll try to mess up less so that you'll love me & not be annoyed with me".

But watch what David says about how God loves Him even while he is being a brute beast.

Verse, 23

"Yet, I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand"

those don't sound like the actions of an angry God that doesn't want us around him & is taking away a portion of His love from us until we earn it back again.

Those sound like the actions of a good, patient & loving dad.

Those sound like the behaviors of a God whose love IS NOT contingent on our behavior or even contingent on our love for Him.

I LOVE the thought that no matter what I do, my God is my dad, His name is Jesus, and no matter if I am being a good son or a brute beast HE IS WITH ME, HOLDING MY HAND, and His love NEVER decreases, never needs be earned, never needs be repaid. You know what I feel in that place and in that reality...

SECURE & SAFE

And that place, is a place, it's THE place, where God works His glorious magic in us to make us into the sons and the daughters He dreams we can still become.

This is a place I am learning more & more to live from with God, and I am being changed by it.

May you live both safe & secure today, hand in hand with Jesus.