Can you imagine if that parent was you?
We all make mistakes, but how heart-wrenching would it be if one day any children you may have turned your back on you? You do the best you can to demonstrate your love, to protect and support your children, yet still, they reject you.
As a good parent you would bring up children in the way you hope will lead them into a happy and healthy life, yet they throw out your sound advice.
They do their own thing.
They reject what they have been taught and shown about what is right. Then choose to live a life which becomes more and more debauched, degraded and distant.
By their actions they seem to be intentionally rebelling against the instruction of their parents. As a result they seem to push you further and further away. They may not call. Your very own children become distant and seem lost to you. They may ignore you. They may speak falsley about you. It may appear that they hate you, their parents.
As the parent, how would that feel?
What would or could you do?
I cannot imagine how distraught I would be.
It would feel to me like my life's work has been to no avail, the people that are a part of me, of my family, had rejected me, misunderstood me and didn't love me. The pain would be indescribable, the way the heart would ache. I am sure I would be mourning for them.
Now, let me tell you......
we are those children.
Each one of us has done things we know are wrong and have turned our backs on what we know is right.
It pains our parent, our Father God, who has been actively involved in our lives since before we were born.
We have rejected Him, we have misunderstood Him and we have ignored Him.
We have thought we know better, we haven't understood all the purposes of the rules and regulations so we have broken them.
As the parent, how would that feel for God?
God has mourned over you, his heart breaks for you, He yearns for the time to come when you choose Him above the other stuff. He does not want you to follow the rules, but to follow His heart. He will wait like the ever patient, ever loving Father that He is. He will not deny you, He will let you in, He will forgive you and He will live life with you.
God has been distraught when each of us has chosen to walk away from Him and fulfill our own agenda. His heart has ached for you.
He will show you, not a load of rules, but His heart when you truly set your mind to find Him.
You just have to choose Him.
Admit you are wrong, accept that you don't have all the answers and that maybe there is more to life than what is going on right now.
God knew that we couldn't understand His heart until He revealed Himself to us, so He did that by sending His own son. His own son, who walked the Earth and faced the trials and temptations just as we do. Jesus showed us what all the rules and regulations meant, the true meaning of the Law by demonstrating the love and grace that was behind it.
God loves us SO much that He chose to send His own son, to us. To us, who were; debauched, degraded, distant, dismissive and denying.
Who would go after people like that?
That is some heart of love!
God sees that you are worth it, you're worth the agony, worth the suffering, worth the cost of restoration.
I am so grateful that God has chosen and chased me. I have not understood where He was coming from for many years, yet He has chosen to gently and faithfully reveal His heart to me.
Some people think that being a christian is about being a good person, and following the rules, but being a christian is about relationship.
Would God of suffered all that if it was about rules?
No!
It is about a heart-broken Father who sent someone who could understand our plight, someone who could walk in the circles we walk and demonstrate His Father's great love. It's about a rescue mission, for us.
Not to confine us to rules but to liberate us through love.
Isaiah 1:
2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;
for the Lord has spoken:
“Children have I reared and brought up,
but they have rebelled against me.
3 The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.”
4 Ah, sinful nation,
a people laden with iniquity,
offspring of evildoers,
children who deal corruptly!
They have forsaken the Lord,
they have despised the Holy One of Israel,
they are utterly estranged.
5 Why will you still be struck down?
Why will you continue to rebel?
The whole head is sick,
and the whole heart faint.
6 From the sole of the foot even to the head,
there is no soundness in it,
but bruises and sores
and raw wounds;
they are not pressed out or bound up
or softened with oil.
No comments:
Post a Comment