The theme of the day: God's love
Since about 9am the theme of my day has been, strikingly enough, God's Love. Why is this striking to me? For probably the past two or three months I have been in a constant struggle with belief that God is loving, or that God really cares at all. This concept to me had seemed so distant, foreign almost. I felt like the world around me was being consumed by my sinful nature. Lust was at an all time high, I had distaste for the world around me; my Christian brothers and sisters, I was supremely uncomfortable in believing that what I was doing with my life was what I was supposed to be doing. Countless nights I would spend awake just thinking about what I could do to change things. It was always based around my self-worth and work. I prayed constantly. I would ask God to show me, clearly, what it is that He wanted me to do with this cynicism. I prayed that He would show me how I could love my roommates and how I could love those I fellowship with. Did I hear an answer? To me, I heard nothing. What was I expecting? I was expecting a divine intervention, I was expecting God to stop time and stand in front of me and say "Kyle, this is what I want you to do". My mind was obsessed with this idea. I had become so dependent on thinking that God would give me this feeling of knowing what I should do with these sin areas, and really with my life as a whole. The more dependent I became on a feeling, the more distant I grew from God. It all came to a breaking point after reading the incredibly influential book Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey. What I pulled out of this book changed my life, and really my view on a real relationship with the personal Creator God. What do you expect? I felt was the theme of this book. Over and over again would the author ask What do you expect? And I would continuously find myself realizing that I expect things that I can't even give out. In fact, I expect things that, if given to me, would not change the way I thought at all. What I expected were feelings. All I wanted was to feel like I had control of myself, to feel like there was significance to my life. Rather than thinking of the truth God has set before all of us, I relied on this erroneous desire for feeling. But what does this accomplish? Does having a specific feeling towards something make it objectively true? I would argue that it does not. When we think about things such as our families, do we also think that our families give us a good feeling all the time? If you are a father (or mother) you know that your children do not always bring about a sense good feeling in your life. In fact a lot of the time children make us angry because they don't seem to listen to a word we say. Does this mean we should not take care of them? Does this mean we should stop believing that taking care of them is what we are supposed to do?We don't do things like take care of our families because it brings us a good feeling. We do it because we know that it is objectively the right thing to do. Our feelings and emotions change constantly. If all we based our actions off of revolved around feelings, we would be extremely lost, depressed, individuals. Rather than basing our mindset and actions off of feelings, we need to look at objective truth. The truth of the bible is that God loves us and nothing can separate us from that love (Romans 8:38). The truth is that God has a plan for everyone (1 Timothy 2:4, John 3:16). The truth is that God is with us wherever we go (Matthew 28:20). The truth is that the Lord has already promised to provide everything we need (Matthew 6:26-34) The Lord came to sacrifice Himself so that we could have a relationship with Him. Our purpose is to be one with God. We are here to live for Him and for His work. We are here to bring others to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). All of this cannot be done without Love. Love is not an emotion, not a feeling, but a truth. The truth is that God is love and the only reason we can love is because God first loved us. If we are connected with God, we have the capability to love others as He loved us.
Today I taught on God's love to a class of fourth and fifth graders, read 6 chapters in the book A Praying Life- Paul Miller which talked all about God's love and read a paper on the Love of God. It seems to me that the Lord is speaking. I have sinned today and I will continue to sin every day, but God knows that and God forgives that.
"Your Grace is sufficient for me. The God of forever, from everlasting to everlasting, praise be Your name."
