During our young adults group tonight, the conversation at our table turned to why we don't lead each other. From there, it went to why we're not comfortable with each other, with the logical answer being that we fear judgment, which ultimately (my interpretation at least) means we fear being alone. There was agreement that there will always be people you are closer to, but I wonder how much of that is God's will for us as a body.
There was a point made that our schedules often don't allow us time to be close to more than one or two people. That is valid to a certain extent, but to how great an extent? Even if it is valid to be close to that few people, why does it take us so long to be comfortable with them? The reason goes back to our fear of how they will react when we drop our armor and let them know the real us.
I can't control others. I want others to come to me with their issues because I really do enjoy helping them and hearing their stories, but I can't make them do that. All I can do is control how I act - and even that is only by God's grace - and try to be as open as I can be. The reason we're so skittish around others is frankly because we have reason to be. Our love is always conditional, but much more so when there is not a longstanding relationship there already. We're judgmental. It's a part of our fallen human natures.
But what are we doing to make others more comfortable with us? Are we trying to be the kind of person that they feel comfortable around? Or are we so busy holding up our own armor that we can't help them set theirs down?
When I've had arguments with people, it happens that at least one of us starts getting defensive. It leads to a counter-attack more often than not, which makes the other person defensive. Neither side is open to hearing much of anything at that point because they're too busy trying to keep from getting hurt to realize the real issue at hand. On a global scale, this was epitomized in the Cold War. Progress is only made when both sides set down their weapons and armor and talk about things. Fear of being hurt is the prevention of progress with both people and nations.
So how do we help people get rid of their fear of being hurt? By disarming ourselves. This includes both arms and armor. We need to drop the sword of our pride (usually disguised as our tongue), lose the dagger that we've used before to stab others in the back when they hurt us, and break the bows and arrows of gossip that we use to shoot down our would-be friends from afar. We can only do these things by having a heart for people, and we can only have a true heart for people when we have a heart for God, for He has to help us love people like only He can.
For our armor, we need to lay down the shield we keep up that deflects all the jokes and barbs at our expense, take off the helmet of our vanity, loosen and let fall the breastplate of our fears of being pierced through the heart, and remove the gauntlets that protect the works of our hands as fiercely as our hands themselves. And we can only do that when we have put our trust in God to protect us and not ourselves, when we realize that it is His love we truly need and not other peoples', when we can go to Him as naked spiritually and emotionally as we were physically at birth and know that He loves us as we are and that is all the approval we really need.
Where does this start? It starts with you, going to God and asking Him to give you a realization of how much He loves you and how much that matters. It is a pride-destroying, fear-obliterating love that leaves you knowing how weak you are, yet so much stronger because of Whom you trust in. You need no armor when you have nothing to fear, and no weapons when you wish no harm on anyone.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Forget Me Not
Nehemiah is an interesting man. Not much is known about him, save for the name of his father and that he was a cupbearer. He went to Jerusalem to rebuild it after the captivity, but one thing that's striking about him is he keeps reminding God, four times throughout the book, of all the good he's done.
It sounds self-serving, certainly at first glance. After all, why would you remind God of anything unless you feel He'll forget otherwise? Why would you remind Him of the good you've done even though all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags?
There's a Bible study we had last night that casts a different light on it, though. What if Nehemiah was giving God a status report, much like some of us have to do in our jobs or for other projects? I don't know about you, but there have been times when, for whatever reason, I've had to say that I've made absolutely no progress in the last week on what was requested of me. It stinks. People have asked me from one week to the next how writing is going and I hate when I have to say that I've written little, regardless of whether it's because I have writer's block or other things have gotten my attention or I've been down or have been just lazy.
What if Nehemiah was calling out to God to say, "Look at what I've done for You in this past month. Are You pleased?" It still (to me, at least) sounds a little self-serving, until you consider the purpose of a status report. A good boss is, generally speaking, going to know more or less where a project is. God, being omniscient, knows where it is, was, will be, when, and how well it will be done. So the status report seems to be more for us rather than our bosses, because no one likes to show up empty-handed.
To practically apply that: would you rather that God remembered or forgot what you did this week? Don't take the cop-out answer of, "I'd rather He remembered some things and forgot some things." If you had to pick one or the other, which would you choose? Have you done a significant amount of good this past week? Have you tried to help someone? Make him or her feel better? Corrected them in love? Helped the needy? Served the church? Shared the Gospel, both verbally and through your conduct? Been honest, even to your own detriment? Turned down temptations because God is more important to you?
Or what about the bad? Have you been complaining too much? Focused on yourself and your problems, especially to the extent that you hurt others or are insensitive to their needs and feelings? Gotten into any addictions, like drugs, alcohol, or pornography? Just been lazy and not done anything? Tried finding answers in your friends, family, and relationships rather than in God and His Word? Lost your temper?
We've all probably done some things from both lists, but which list would you say describes your last week more closely? Would you want God to take this last week as a snapshot of your life? Would you want others to know that this is a fairly typical week for you? If so, pray that God gives you the strength to live like this as much as you can and that you can continue to improve where you need to. If not, pray that God will help you with your struggles and guide you in living more as He wants you to live.
Remember that this is not about judgment. If it was, our only option would be to have God forget every week because we sin every week and just one makes us unworthy of Him. It's not about getting benefits from God, for He owes us nothing. We can never repay what He's done for us already. This is about living a life pleasing to Him because it's not about our works, because we love Him for how good He already has been to us, because we worship Him just for Who He is, regardless of what He does for us.
This next week, give a status report to God, whether it's good or bad (better yet, try to do it daily), and ask Him to help you make the next one better. Sometimes it will be, sometimes it will be worse, but asking for His help and praying often will help you be able to give a good one, full of God's strength and blessings and love.
It sounds self-serving, certainly at first glance. After all, why would you remind God of anything unless you feel He'll forget otherwise? Why would you remind Him of the good you've done even though all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags?
There's a Bible study we had last night that casts a different light on it, though. What if Nehemiah was giving God a status report, much like some of us have to do in our jobs or for other projects? I don't know about you, but there have been times when, for whatever reason, I've had to say that I've made absolutely no progress in the last week on what was requested of me. It stinks. People have asked me from one week to the next how writing is going and I hate when I have to say that I've written little, regardless of whether it's because I have writer's block or other things have gotten my attention or I've been down or have been just lazy.
What if Nehemiah was calling out to God to say, "Look at what I've done for You in this past month. Are You pleased?" It still (to me, at least) sounds a little self-serving, until you consider the purpose of a status report. A good boss is, generally speaking, going to know more or less where a project is. God, being omniscient, knows where it is, was, will be, when, and how well it will be done. So the status report seems to be more for us rather than our bosses, because no one likes to show up empty-handed.
To practically apply that: would you rather that God remembered or forgot what you did this week? Don't take the cop-out answer of, "I'd rather He remembered some things and forgot some things." If you had to pick one or the other, which would you choose? Have you done a significant amount of good this past week? Have you tried to help someone? Make him or her feel better? Corrected them in love? Helped the needy? Served the church? Shared the Gospel, both verbally and through your conduct? Been honest, even to your own detriment? Turned down temptations because God is more important to you?
Or what about the bad? Have you been complaining too much? Focused on yourself and your problems, especially to the extent that you hurt others or are insensitive to their needs and feelings? Gotten into any addictions, like drugs, alcohol, or pornography? Just been lazy and not done anything? Tried finding answers in your friends, family, and relationships rather than in God and His Word? Lost your temper?
We've all probably done some things from both lists, but which list would you say describes your last week more closely? Would you want God to take this last week as a snapshot of your life? Would you want others to know that this is a fairly typical week for you? If so, pray that God gives you the strength to live like this as much as you can and that you can continue to improve where you need to. If not, pray that God will help you with your struggles and guide you in living more as He wants you to live.
Remember that this is not about judgment. If it was, our only option would be to have God forget every week because we sin every week and just one makes us unworthy of Him. It's not about getting benefits from God, for He owes us nothing. We can never repay what He's done for us already. This is about living a life pleasing to Him because it's not about our works, because we love Him for how good He already has been to us, because we worship Him just for Who He is, regardless of what He does for us.
This next week, give a status report to God, whether it's good or bad (better yet, try to do it daily), and ask Him to help you make the next one better. Sometimes it will be, sometimes it will be worse, but asking for His help and praying often will help you be able to give a good one, full of God's strength and blessings and love.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
The Universe in a Nutshell
That used to be about the size of the universe, if you ask most scientists. For the tiniest fragment of a second, all of the matter and energy we see today was supposedly small enough to be skewered by a pin. I personally find the Big Bang Theory ridiculous for several reasons:
1. There's no explanation for where that matter and energy came from in the first place. The best explanation is that it came from a collapsing universe before it, but that doesn't explain where it came from originally; it just pushes the question back another 30 billion years.
2. The nucleus of an atom is extremely small, something akin to a marble on the pitcher's mound inside a major league stadium, with the electrons running laps around the seats in the upper deck. Even if you were to scale this up (WARNING: This is where I pull out math), it doesn't work. If the nucleus is a basketball, the electrons are about 20 miles away. How many basketballs could fit in a sphere with a 20 mile radius? A lot: about 19.66 quadrillion (assuming all space was filled; actual capacity would be less). Seems like it might work if you had no space in the individual atoms, doesn't it?
Not so fast. Astronomers have discovered a star called VY Canis Majoris, which is about 1.7 billion, yes, billion, miles across. If you were to use the same ratio to condense it, it would still be nearly 6,300 miles across. Not exactly pea-sized. And that's just one star, not the countless stars and planets and nebulae and everything else we see.
3. The Big Bang Theory doesn't explain the red shift we see. Red shift is a phenomenon where stars traveling away from earth appear redder based on how quickly they're moving away relative to us. The universe is actually accelerating, causing an increase in red shifts. Scientists don't know why and have posited that there must be "dark matter" and "dark energy" out there. The dark matter is supposed to explain why light behaves in unexpected ways and the dark energy explains how the universe is speeding up, but both of these are supposedly being created at a fantastic rate, particularly the dark energy, which violates the law conservation of matter and energy.
There is a new theory out there (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25492/) that suggests the universe has no beginning and no end and just expands and contracts. It accurately predicts what happens with the red shift, and wiggles out of 2, but still doesn't explain where everything came from in the first place. It also doesn't explain how the universe knows when to shift from expansion to contraction, how that happens, or how it overcomes gravity at the point of maximum contraction (or conversely, how gravity or another attractive force somehow increase at maximum expansion). Also, if the universe were infinitely old, we'd have practically no radioactive minerals anywhere because of half-lives.
Ok, now that we've gone over some of the basic science of it, it's time to ask an important question or two. First, why is it that people in science continue to laugh at the Bible when all the answers are in it? The Bible is actually one of the most scientifically accurate books out there, insofar as it mentions science. It told us that worker ants were female (most versions of Proverbs 6:6 say "learn her ways". Both when the Bible was written and when it was translated were male-dominated societies that would have tended to call animals as hes or its if the gender was unknown.
It says the stars are innumerable in Genesis 15:5. Before the telescope, though, many men tried and the counts usually came up at about 1,000, which is easily countable. It has only been since the invention of the telescope that we've seen the Bible proven right.
Isaiah states that the earth is round in Isaiah 40:22, referring to the "circle of the earth", over 200 years before Pythagoras first theorized that the earth was round and over 400 years before Aristotle accepted it on empirical grounds.
Job 26:7 says God hung the earth on nothing. Other cultures believed it rested on the back of some great beast or Titan. It wasn't until Copernicus in about 1500 that we have a scientist realizing the earth has nothing under it.
Acts 17:26 says we are all of one blood. Until recently, scientists thought there were vast differences between races. We know the opposite to be true now.
Job 38:16 talks of springs in the sea. Scientists have now found hot springs at the bottom of the ocean.
Can these all be lucky guesses? Blind rhetoric that turned out true? It's quite possible that the writers themselves did not understand what was being said, particularly not in its entirety, but the odds of all of these being true are remarkably small if you assume blind guesses, particularly when other surrounding cultures held directly opposing beliefs or were completely ignorant.
No, it's that man wants to be separate from God. We want to live our lives apart from His rules and believe somehow that if we can reason Him out of our lives, He doesn't exist. Psalm 19:1 reads, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands." As scientists run out of answers and start breaking their own accepted laws to wedge their theories in, maybe a few of them will realize that the answers have been in the church and not the observatory or the lab. Maybe they will finally realize that their telescopes are not the real windows to the beginning of Creation. But if they are true scientists and consider all the evidence, don't they have to at least allow for the possibility of a Creator?
1. There's no explanation for where that matter and energy came from in the first place. The best explanation is that it came from a collapsing universe before it, but that doesn't explain where it came from originally; it just pushes the question back another 30 billion years.
2. The nucleus of an atom is extremely small, something akin to a marble on the pitcher's mound inside a major league stadium, with the electrons running laps around the seats in the upper deck. Even if you were to scale this up (WARNING: This is where I pull out math), it doesn't work. If the nucleus is a basketball, the electrons are about 20 miles away. How many basketballs could fit in a sphere with a 20 mile radius? A lot: about 19.66 quadrillion (assuming all space was filled; actual capacity would be less). Seems like it might work if you had no space in the individual atoms, doesn't it?
Not so fast. Astronomers have discovered a star called VY Canis Majoris, which is about 1.7 billion, yes, billion, miles across. If you were to use the same ratio to condense it, it would still be nearly 6,300 miles across. Not exactly pea-sized. And that's just one star, not the countless stars and planets and nebulae and everything else we see.
3. The Big Bang Theory doesn't explain the red shift we see. Red shift is a phenomenon where stars traveling away from earth appear redder based on how quickly they're moving away relative to us. The universe is actually accelerating, causing an increase in red shifts. Scientists don't know why and have posited that there must be "dark matter" and "dark energy" out there. The dark matter is supposed to explain why light behaves in unexpected ways and the dark energy explains how the universe is speeding up, but both of these are supposedly being created at a fantastic rate, particularly the dark energy, which violates the law conservation of matter and energy.
There is a new theory out there (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25492/) that suggests the universe has no beginning and no end and just expands and contracts. It accurately predicts what happens with the red shift, and wiggles out of 2, but still doesn't explain where everything came from in the first place. It also doesn't explain how the universe knows when to shift from expansion to contraction, how that happens, or how it overcomes gravity at the point of maximum contraction (or conversely, how gravity or another attractive force somehow increase at maximum expansion). Also, if the universe were infinitely old, we'd have practically no radioactive minerals anywhere because of half-lives.
Ok, now that we've gone over some of the basic science of it, it's time to ask an important question or two. First, why is it that people in science continue to laugh at the Bible when all the answers are in it? The Bible is actually one of the most scientifically accurate books out there, insofar as it mentions science. It told us that worker ants were female (most versions of Proverbs 6:6 say "learn her ways". Both when the Bible was written and when it was translated were male-dominated societies that would have tended to call animals as hes or its if the gender was unknown.
It says the stars are innumerable in Genesis 15:5. Before the telescope, though, many men tried and the counts usually came up at about 1,000, which is easily countable. It has only been since the invention of the telescope that we've seen the Bible proven right.
Isaiah states that the earth is round in Isaiah 40:22, referring to the "circle of the earth", over 200 years before Pythagoras first theorized that the earth was round and over 400 years before Aristotle accepted it on empirical grounds.
Job 26:7 says God hung the earth on nothing. Other cultures believed it rested on the back of some great beast or Titan. It wasn't until Copernicus in about 1500 that we have a scientist realizing the earth has nothing under it.
Acts 17:26 says we are all of one blood. Until recently, scientists thought there were vast differences between races. We know the opposite to be true now.
Job 38:16 talks of springs in the sea. Scientists have now found hot springs at the bottom of the ocean.
Can these all be lucky guesses? Blind rhetoric that turned out true? It's quite possible that the writers themselves did not understand what was being said, particularly not in its entirety, but the odds of all of these being true are remarkably small if you assume blind guesses, particularly when other surrounding cultures held directly opposing beliefs or were completely ignorant.
No, it's that man wants to be separate from God. We want to live our lives apart from His rules and believe somehow that if we can reason Him out of our lives, He doesn't exist. Psalm 19:1 reads, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands." As scientists run out of answers and start breaking their own accepted laws to wedge their theories in, maybe a few of them will realize that the answers have been in the church and not the observatory or the lab. Maybe they will finally realize that their telescopes are not the real windows to the beginning of Creation. But if they are true scientists and consider all the evidence, don't they have to at least allow for the possibility of a Creator?
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
I'm Fine, Thanks.
I hear that answer a lot when I ask how people are. When I ask again, I here it repeated or insisted upon. It may be true sometimes, but in a number of cases, I know it isn't.
We went out to dinner at IHOP after our young adults service. One topic of discussion was what some of the people were going through and one guy, who always seems happy, shared how he often wasn't. He then said, "It's funny: some of the people who seem the happiest are those who struggle the most with it, because they have no one to really ask them how they are doing."
It's true. We solve problems if we can and tend to ignore what isn't broken. With machines or animals, there are obvious clues that they aren't right, but with humans, many of us try to hide what's going on. There are several reasons for it, but I think most of us want to let someone in on what we're going through on some level.
Challenge for the week (yes, I know it's been a while since the last one and I'm not going to promise it will become something I try to do weekly again): Find someone who seems pretty happy overall and ask them how they're doing. Do this with someone you know reasonably well and not a complete stranger, but ask what's going on and don't be thrown off by the first answer or two you get back. Get to know what is really going on in their lives. Be there for someone who usually doesn't have someone there for them because they seem fine most of the time.
We went out to dinner at IHOP after our young adults service. One topic of discussion was what some of the people were going through and one guy, who always seems happy, shared how he often wasn't. He then said, "It's funny: some of the people who seem the happiest are those who struggle the most with it, because they have no one to really ask them how they are doing."
It's true. We solve problems if we can and tend to ignore what isn't broken. With machines or animals, there are obvious clues that they aren't right, but with humans, many of us try to hide what's going on. There are several reasons for it, but I think most of us want to let someone in on what we're going through on some level.
Challenge for the week (yes, I know it's been a while since the last one and I'm not going to promise it will become something I try to do weekly again): Find someone who seems pretty happy overall and ask them how they're doing. Do this with someone you know reasonably well and not a complete stranger, but ask what's going on and don't be thrown off by the first answer or two you get back. Get to know what is really going on in their lives. Be there for someone who usually doesn't have someone there for them because they seem fine most of the time.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
"How much will it cost?"
As someone who is usually careful with his money, that's a question I ask a lot when someone proposes a new restaurant, new activity, or a trip. There's no such thing as something for nothing...and in a number of instances, the something you give can get you a lot less in return - in either quantity or quality or even both - than you expected. I reason that I can only spend the money I have once, so I had better get a good value out of it.
Things would be different if everything in the world was free. I'd have been to Europe and toured the old castles and the museums there. I'd go to all the sporting events I wanted. I'd have a nice house with great furniture and a beautiful golden retriever to play tug-of-war with. But other people expect things from me in return for all of this, namely, money.
For the other things that I want, I pay in different currency. If I want friends, I have to pay in kindness and humor. If I want love, I have to learn what her love languages are and speak them to her. If I want a promotion, I pay for it with hard and intelligent work. For everything in this world, there is a price...
...Except for the thing we want the most: unconditional love. We all want...no, need...to be loved, to feel that someone cares about us more than we even care about ourselves. Someone who knows every last one of our faults, sins, and weaknesses and doesn't sweep them under the rug or deny them, but loves us in spite of them. Someone we can be our true selves around, broken and bleeding when we're hurt, exuberant, dependent, in need - anything.
Sometimes, though, it's so hard for us to accept when it's offered to us.
Here's what I mean: God loves us, more than we love each other, ourselves, or could even imagine loving ourselves. His love is pure and without ulterior motive because - and this is important - we have nothing He needs. He wants our love, but even that helps us more than it helps Him. But we don't accept it, probably because we can't even believe it.
Most Christians seem to do ok with this concept in their minds. "Yeah, God loves me no matter what. How amazing!", they sing a song, listen to a sermon, and go on their way. Get this concept in your heart, though, or at least try to comprehend it on a fuller level. It could go something like this:
You: God, I have some confessions. Today, some guy cut me off on the freeway and I cussed at him.
God: I love you.
You: I also stole some office supplies and then looked at porn when I got home from work.
God: I still love you.
You: But I started shooting heroine.
God: I love you.
You: And I think I might be gay or at least bisexual.
God: I love you.
You: I got into a fight at the bar last night and beat someone so severely they're breathing through a mask right now in ICU. His knee may never heal and I've just changed his life forever.
God: I love you anyway.
You: I hate myself!
God: But I love you.
You: I hate You, too! You do nothing for me and it feels like You hate me and my entire family! Give me one good reason why I should listen to anything You have to say!
God: I will always love you.
Nothing, not a single thing, can make God stop loving us. He may punish us as a good father punishes his children, but even that is done because He loves us and not because He doesn't, as we so often assume.
And He wants to help us in our struggles. I think our problem is that we simply don't believe He loves us. We can't fathom a love that deep and free. "God can help me in this, but will He? I'm just me. I'm no Moses or Abraham or David. I have no kingdom to run. I'll just have to figure it out on my own." I've said something similar to myself before. I've believed God doesn't love me because He didn't answer my prayers the way I wanted Him to and that He never would care about a single request (read: demand) I made of Him.
The Bible, though, says that without faith, it is impossible to please God, that we first must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11, where the above is found, goes on to list some of the giants of faith in the Old Testament. Why do we believe that God loves them more than He loves us? These people listed weren't perfect. Jacob was a conniving little jerk, swindling his brother out of both birthright and blessing. Noah got so drunk after building the Ark that he passed out naked. Abraham took matters into his own hand and had Ishmael outside of God's will. Moses killed a man and was a coward when God first called him. And Rahab was a prostitute. They were sinners, just like we are. But they believed in God, not just that He existed, but that He truly and deeply loved them. They accepted that love and He showed Himself mighty with miracles that we still discuss today, some 3,000+ years later.
The Bible says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." Hebrews 13:8. The same God Who loved and cared for His people then is alive and well today and loves you every bit as much as He loved them.
He sent His Son to die for you. Why do you keep thinking that He doesn't love you enough to help you with your current struggles and trials? He may not answer them the way you want, but He will be there, day by day, giving you strength and hope and encouragement and, most importantly, His infinite and free love.
Things would be different if everything in the world was free. I'd have been to Europe and toured the old castles and the museums there. I'd go to all the sporting events I wanted. I'd have a nice house with great furniture and a beautiful golden retriever to play tug-of-war with. But other people expect things from me in return for all of this, namely, money.
For the other things that I want, I pay in different currency. If I want friends, I have to pay in kindness and humor. If I want love, I have to learn what her love languages are and speak them to her. If I want a promotion, I pay for it with hard and intelligent work. For everything in this world, there is a price...
...Except for the thing we want the most: unconditional love. We all want...no, need...to be loved, to feel that someone cares about us more than we even care about ourselves. Someone who knows every last one of our faults, sins, and weaknesses and doesn't sweep them under the rug or deny them, but loves us in spite of them. Someone we can be our true selves around, broken and bleeding when we're hurt, exuberant, dependent, in need - anything.
Sometimes, though, it's so hard for us to accept when it's offered to us.
Here's what I mean: God loves us, more than we love each other, ourselves, or could even imagine loving ourselves. His love is pure and without ulterior motive because - and this is important - we have nothing He needs. He wants our love, but even that helps us more than it helps Him. But we don't accept it, probably because we can't even believe it.
Most Christians seem to do ok with this concept in their minds. "Yeah, God loves me no matter what. How amazing!", they sing a song, listen to a sermon, and go on their way. Get this concept in your heart, though, or at least try to comprehend it on a fuller level. It could go something like this:
You: God, I have some confessions. Today, some guy cut me off on the freeway and I cussed at him.
God: I love you.
You: I also stole some office supplies and then looked at porn when I got home from work.
God: I still love you.
You: But I started shooting heroine.
God: I love you.
You: And I think I might be gay or at least bisexual.
God: I love you.
You: I got into a fight at the bar last night and beat someone so severely they're breathing through a mask right now in ICU. His knee may never heal and I've just changed his life forever.
God: I love you anyway.
You: I hate myself!
God: But I love you.
You: I hate You, too! You do nothing for me and it feels like You hate me and my entire family! Give me one good reason why I should listen to anything You have to say!
God: I will always love you.
Nothing, not a single thing, can make God stop loving us. He may punish us as a good father punishes his children, but even that is done because He loves us and not because He doesn't, as we so often assume.
And He wants to help us in our struggles. I think our problem is that we simply don't believe He loves us. We can't fathom a love that deep and free. "God can help me in this, but will He? I'm just me. I'm no Moses or Abraham or David. I have no kingdom to run. I'll just have to figure it out on my own." I've said something similar to myself before. I've believed God doesn't love me because He didn't answer my prayers the way I wanted Him to and that He never would care about a single request (read: demand) I made of Him.
The Bible, though, says that without faith, it is impossible to please God, that we first must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11, where the above is found, goes on to list some of the giants of faith in the Old Testament. Why do we believe that God loves them more than He loves us? These people listed weren't perfect. Jacob was a conniving little jerk, swindling his brother out of both birthright and blessing. Noah got so drunk after building the Ark that he passed out naked. Abraham took matters into his own hand and had Ishmael outside of God's will. Moses killed a man and was a coward when God first called him. And Rahab was a prostitute. They were sinners, just like we are. But they believed in God, not just that He existed, but that He truly and deeply loved them. They accepted that love and He showed Himself mighty with miracles that we still discuss today, some 3,000+ years later.
The Bible says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." Hebrews 13:8. The same God Who loved and cared for His people then is alive and well today and loves you every bit as much as He loved them.
He sent His Son to die for you. Why do you keep thinking that He doesn't love you enough to help you with your current struggles and trials? He may not answer them the way you want, but He will be there, day by day, giving you strength and hope and encouragement and, most importantly, His infinite and free love.
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