I recently saw this video from John
Lynch. In it he explains there are two primary motivations in our relationship
with God. “Pleasing God” and “Trusting God.”
The first, full of self effort, leads to exhaustion, frustration and hopelessness. The second leads to grace.
We constantly battle between the two, living in grace, then find ourselves trying to earn it all over again.
It’s easy to believe that Christ died for the whole world. He’s God. We’re his creation. He has to love everybody.
What’s harder to believe is he did it for me.
I think we believe God has this generic love for everyone. We’re told from childhood we’re supposed to love everyone. Our parents tell us, our Sunday school teachers tell us, everybody.
So we say we do. In elementary school we used to say, “I love her in God’s way.” That way you could say you loved somebody without revealing how cute you thought she was. But as we learn to say we love everyone we began to realize something…
There are a lot of people we don’t like.
So if I say I love everybody, but there are people I don’t want to sit with at the lunch table, maybe that’s how God is too. He loves the whole world, Christ died to redeem it, but if it came right down to it, he’d hang out with the cool kids at recess.
What’s worse is we began to learn if we wanted people to love us back we had to act a certain way. If I wanted the cute girl to love me, I had to quit punching her on the playground. Proper behavior had a payoff… acceptance.
This combination of feelings, of God’s “generic love” and earned acceptance, is powerful. They are woven so tightly and deeply inside of us we aren't even aware they impact our motivations.
So we spend our lives, struggling for perfection or pretending we've achieved it, never allowing ourselves to be truly known, because then, everyone would realize we aren't lovable. Heck, God only loves me because he has to.
Listen, it was a profound love that drew Christ to the Cross. Not a love he had for just anybody, it was a love he had for you. You specifically. You in particular. You. And he’d sit at the lunch table with you any day.
The first, full of self effort, leads to exhaustion, frustration and hopelessness. The second leads to grace.
We constantly battle between the two, living in grace, then find ourselves trying to earn it all over again.
It’s easy to believe that Christ died for the whole world. He’s God. We’re his creation. He has to love everybody.
What’s harder to believe is he did it for me.
I think we believe God has this generic love for everyone. We’re told from childhood we’re supposed to love everyone. Our parents tell us, our Sunday school teachers tell us, everybody.
So we say we do. In elementary school we used to say, “I love her in God’s way.” That way you could say you loved somebody without revealing how cute you thought she was. But as we learn to say we love everyone we began to realize something…
There are a lot of people we don’t like.
So if I say I love everybody, but there are people I don’t want to sit with at the lunch table, maybe that’s how God is too. He loves the whole world, Christ died to redeem it, but if it came right down to it, he’d hang out with the cool kids at recess.
What’s worse is we began to learn if we wanted people to love us back we had to act a certain way. If I wanted the cute girl to love me, I had to quit punching her on the playground. Proper behavior had a payoff… acceptance.
This combination of feelings, of God’s “generic love” and earned acceptance, is powerful. They are woven so tightly and deeply inside of us we aren't even aware they impact our motivations.
So we spend our lives, struggling for perfection or pretending we've achieved it, never allowing ourselves to be truly known, because then, everyone would realize we aren't lovable. Heck, God only loves me because he has to.
Listen, it was a profound love that drew Christ to the Cross. Not a love he had for just anybody, it was a love he had for you. You specifically. You in particular. You. And he’d sit at the lunch table with you any day.
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