What Matters To God? (3)
Wednesday May 20, 2015
As we noted yesterday, from Adam and Eve all through the generations to the generation alive today, people have lived in an environment where good and evil are mixed. God intended humans to have security and love in their relationships. However, each of us has known experiences of broken trust and abandonment. The love that was rightfully ours in God’s creation was confused when the knowledge of evil came and brought fear of God rather than the security within His embrace. Fear makes us look elsewhere for love and that’s why we end up in all the wrong places.
A searching and fearless moral inventory is one place to begin to sort out what’s right and what’s wrong with our way of living. We have to begin where the break began. We have to return to the God who made us in love, who designed us to work ONLY inside a deep experience of knowing we are loved by Him. We have to ask Him to search us and show us where we are living in fear and brokenness rather than in His unfailing love.
God’s part is to help us sort the issues. Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life. (Psalm 139:23-24 NLT)
Our part? Admit we’re broken and in need of fixing. God’s part? Purify us from everything that isn’t right in us. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. (1 John 1:9 NLT)
What matters to God is that we admit that the root of our problem is thinking we are smart enough to chart our own course. In humility we can then turn to God who alone can give us life. God in His mercy will cleanse and heal us and set us on a new pathway to a rich and satisfying life.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8 NLT)
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