33. Is it really surprising that God loves you?

0:00At Become New, get 10 minutes of spiritual formation every weekday with John Orberg. There is now there for no condemnation. We're giving it up. We're walking through this season. I'm not going to cadem, I'm not going to blame. And I want to look at how deeply that goes in the nature of God today for these few moments and what a difference it makes in our lives. It's not uncommon that you hear people, especially inside the church say something like, it's amazing that God loves me. I can't believe that God would forgive me. Or it's remarkable, I'm astonished that God would be kind and caring and loving towards me. No, it's not astonishing at all. And I don't say that to be surprising.

1:00It's actually an incredibly important point about God. There is a theological deficit, I don't know of another way to say it, there is a theological deficit in very many, maybe most Christians, and it often lurks underneath the surface. And it creates a kind of spiritual poverty and a kind of emotional deflation. So we're going to look at two great truths that we hold together today, and I want to talk to you about why it is not surprising that God loves you and why that matters and what to do with it. I want to start by reading several verses in the Bible and invite you as you hear them to just simply think about, reflect on what they say about God and his nature. Most famous verse in the Bible, and when it precedes the statement that we talk a lot about in this series, for God so loved the world, gave His only Son, that whoever trusts Him should not perish but have everlasting life, for God did not send His Son into the world

2:05to condemn the world. Alright, here is our first John chapter 4. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God, whoever does not love does not know God because God is love. In Ephesians 3, verse 17, Paul tells the church, I pray for you that you being rooted will come back to that notion of being rooted and established in what in love may have power together with all God's people to grasp. Not when he power to grasp, how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know. Now when the Bible talks about knowing it doesn't just mean knowing about, it doesn't just mean affirming information, it's participatory engagement, it's the experience of and to

3:05know this love, that surpasses knowledge, notice the paradox in there, nobody can ever fully describe it but you can know it, surpasses knowledge but you can know it. Can people make God stop being love? Oh no, no, Romans chapter 5, verses 7 and 8, rarely will somebody die for a righteous person, no for a good person, somebody might possibly die, but God demonstrates His own love for us in this while we were still sinners. Christ died for us. So here are two terribly important truths that we must hold in our minds simultaneously. Number one, alamess. I am a sinner, I'm broken, this can make it sound a little bit casual but it goes way deep. There is a propensity for evil within me that will damage other people and I don't even know how deep it is.

4:07Now this is not the whole truth about me, I also am a spiritual being with an eternal destiny and God's great universe, thank God, but it is a truth about me, alamess. Here's the second truth, God is love. Now here's what's terribly important to understand. This truth has no power to change that truth, but that truth has a great power to change this truth. This truth is temporary, it's true that I'm a mess won't always be, this truth is eternal, this truth is partial, this truth is utterly comprehensive. So now it's important to understand that when we talk about God being love that's not a feeling, although love feels deeply, it's not simply an action, although love does all kinds of things, it's not painless. See, as Lewis in his book The Problem of Pain talks about what he calls the intolerable

5:09compliment. He uses the example of an artist working with a piece of art like Jeremiah talks about God and people being a pottery or a Peter talks about people being a building that God is putting together and Lewis says, you know, with an artist, if you're just doodling, you just got a little sketch and it doesn't work well, you don't mess with it. You throw away, you get rid of it. If it's the great master piece of your life, if it's divincy and the last supper, my friend Kevin loves this line, somebody says, hey, if you want to be in the picture, everybody getting the right side of the table, but I digress. Think about divincy's the last supper, it has to be perfect. If it is the ultimate master piece of an artist's life, he will go over and over and over and over it and scrape it away and scrape it away and redo it and scrape it away and redo it. Lewis says, if the picture was sentient, if that piece of pottery that Jeremiah talks about had feelings, it would probably say, hey, you know, there's good enough.

6:13It's precisely when an artist is working with a masterpiece and Paul says to the church of Ephesus, we are God's masterpiece. So until our character becomes perfected until we become as immersed in love as it is possible to be with God's help, he's going to keep working. So love can be quite painful, but here's the thing, love is God's disposition. It is God's nature and to love is to will the good. God wills the good for everything he made and wants to be connected to it and wants to be united to it. Now think for a moment, what must existence be like for God if it's true that he is love? This is part of the theological deficit. Most people have not seriously thought about God's nature. What would it be like to be love? Well when we have his in 1 Corinthians 13, so now think about this being God's nature, because existence, what would it be like to be this way? Love is patient, love is kind.

7:13Love does not envy, does not boast, is not proud. Love does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it's not easily irritated. It keeps no record of wrongs, it always rejoices in the truth, doesn't delight in evil, always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always persevere. It never fails. Now imagine sight and sing to God, hey, why don't you try being different for a while? Why don't you be impatient? Why don't you experience that kind of restless, be easily irritated, keep record of wrongs? Who's hurt yet? And decide you're going to get even with them. Just ruminate over this stuff that hurts your feelings, figure out how can you take vengeance on other people? Instead of experiencing hope, anticipation of the good, be skeptical, be cynical, don't persevere, be a quitter, fail. Do you see, once you stop and think about it, how utterly unthinkable it is, that God would live in anything other than love?

8:16It is His nature, it, tell a fish not to swim, tell a bird not to fly. God cannot, would not be anything other than a being who wills the good for everything that He makes and desires to be united to it and will continue to work towards that end. Can anybody stop it? No, that's the reality that we're invited to live in. Jesus says in Luke 635, love your enemies, do good to them and you will be children of the most high because He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Now does He ever stop being kind to the ungrateful and the wicked, while not according to Jesus? Do you understand, now I'm a mess, this is true, as part of what we understand about each other, there is much in me that is unlovely, that's true, but what would be astonishing would be for God to step out of love?

9:17People think it must have been so hard for Jesus on the cross to say, Father, forgive them. No, no, what would have been hard on the cross would be for Jesus to say, get them, Dad, get them, Father, ma'am, my Father gets ahold of you. So God is love, it is not surprising that God loves you, that's not that minimize our unloveliness, sin, brokenness, wrongness, capacity for evil, it's to understand the nature of God. Therefore Paul says, be rooted in love, be rooted in love years ago in our first house, I was trying to do some gardening stuff and I got a tree, I was so excited about this and I dug a hole, I prepared the soil, I got special kind of soil to mix in together with it, I would water it on a real regular basis, I got miracle grow and learn all about miracle grow and the right kind of protective stuff and put it in the right spot in the

10:18yard and then we were gone for a week and when we got back it turned out that the boy who lives next door, he was kind of an imp, his name was Billy, but that wasn't his real name, his real name was Attila, he came and he very carefully dug the roots up out of the soil and let them dry in the sun and my tree died. And that's when happens when I am not rooted in love, that's the image that Paul uses and pray that you being rooted and to stab it, now we mostly do that with our minds, that's mostly where we do it. What my thoughts dwell in, my soul is rooted in. So today here's the thought to be rooted, God is love, I am loved by God, I am forgiven by God, I am watched over by God. God is my friend, Jesus is my friend and all through the day, maybe go look in the mirror, maybe write the word down someplace, just allow my mind to be rooted in love and then just

11:20let that love flow to other people, be kind, be generous, let somebody else cut in line, write an email, give somebody a hug, go visit somebody, make a donation, be generous with somebody, pay for somebody, care about somebody, forgive somebody, say something good about somebody, just let it flow because there is no condemnation because I am a mess, but it will not always be a mess, God is love, and God will always be love. Hey did you have a takeaway from that teaching? Don't keep it to yourself, share it in the comments or text it to us or email it to us, we would love to hear from you. My name is Tim, I'm a part of the team here at Become New and I'm a Pastor. We distribute 10 minute teachings just like this one every single weekday to help you

12:20and ourselves grow spiritually in Christ one day at a time. We're so glad that you're joining us on this journey, subscribe to the YouTube channel to make sure you don't miss any future episodes from John or head over to Become New.com to find other resources like the email that we write to go along with every video. We're glad that you're here, we'll see you next time.