God Can’t Love me

Many of us think of God as stern, vengeful and angry. We feel that God is mad at us sinners and wants to punish us. But that is NOT the way God is. God defiantly will discipline those who need it when they continue to sin, but that discipline is done out of love, much as a worldly father will discipline his child when they get out of line. The discipline that God enacts is done to teach us and to train us to walk in the right path.

But still, some of us just can’t understand how God can love us.

There are times when we feel we can’t be loved by God or anyone else for that matter. We’ve messed up too much, we’ve sinned, we’ve hurt people, or we’ve just plain made a mess of our lives. We don’t feel that God is anywhere near us, in fact we feel He’s very far from us.

I am reminded of a scene in the mini-series “The Kennedy’s” where Joe Kennedy goes to his priest to ask for prayer for his son Jack, the future President, when he was missing after the PT 109 incident. The Priest of course says that he will pray but tells Joe that he can pray as well. Joe replies that God wouldn’t listen to him; he’s sinned too much.

That anyone would feel just because they are or were a sinner, that God would not listen to them, or doesn’t care about them or doesn’t love them is very sad. God does love them and is willing to listen to their prayers. God loves to hear from a sinner who is sorry and willing to repent and ask God to help them do better in the future.

I know that from my own life. I have never been perfect, and I am not perfect now, but I know that God loves me and does hear my prayers and is willing to help me do better. In the past, I have messed up my life, I have hurt people, I have been selfish and way too proud, but God still watched over me and guided me and protected me. Today I am doing better, even though I mess up from time to time, He still loves me.

He will do the same for you.

Romans 5:8 tells us…

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Think about that for a minute. While we were still in our sin, Jesus died for us. He is willing to go to the cross for us, to save us. We didn’t ask Him to do it for us, we didn’t have to clean ourselves up before He would do it for us; we didn’t have to do anything, while we were still in our sin, He died for us.

So many people think that before they can come to God in prayer or before they can truly be heard by God, they must clean themselves up. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Jesus didn’t hang around with the holy people; He came to and spent time with the sinners. And they loved Him for it.

Mark 2:16-17 tells us what we need to hear.

16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

We are the sick, and we have a great need for a doctor.

“But?” we say, “I have messed up too much, and I keep messing up.”

I have heard this said by more than one pastor, “We are to catch the fish, its God’s job to clean them.”

When we come to Christ and admit we are sinners, that we cannot save ourselves and that we need a Savior, He is the one who comes into our lives and works on us to clean up the rough edges. And most of us have some pretty rough edges to be cleaned and that is where some of the discipline comes into play.

Listen to what Paul, the writer of half the New Testament says in Romans 7:19.

For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

If Paul still struggled with not doing what he knows he should, and God still listened to him and used him mightily, who are we to think that God would not hear us or use us?

This verse in Romans is a great comfort to me and it should be to you as well.

Here’s the point, if we love God and ask Him to help us, He will hear us and work with us to overcome the problems we face each and every day. He will give us the strength to overcome the temptations that we are faced with.

In Psalm 139:23-24 David asks God to search his heart and test him.

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

If we come to God and ask Him to search our hearts and see if there is any sin that we need to repent of or need help over coming He will do it. With His help we can overcome whatever it is that is weighing us down.

Remember Christ died while we were still in our sin and even from the cross asked the Father to forgive those who were crucifying Him.

God does LOVE YOU.

He went to the cross and took all those sins from you even before you knew Him. He has watched over you all of your life and He is not about to give up on you now.

There is a great verse in Romans 8 we all need to remember.

38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It doesn’t matter what we have done or what we are doing, if we are in Christ and He is in us, then He will never stop loving us or caring for us or protecting us. He will hear our prayers.

Never think that God can’t love you… because He gave up everything for you.

Will God ever give up on you?

Yes!

If you continue to give up on Him, He will at long last let you have your way.

But does that mean that He will stop loving you?

No, even if you stop loving Him, He will NEVER stop loving you!

Don’t give up on God; He loves you too much to ever stop loving you.

As Paul says in Romans, nothing “…will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

In the scene from “The Kennedy’s” that I mentioned above, what was the reason Joe Kennedy felt that God wouldn’t listen to him? It was because he would not let go of his own sin. He felt that God could not forgive him, and he probably didn’t think he deserved forgiveness because he was still in his sin, the very sin that Jesus died on the cross to forgive.

The work that Jesus did for us on the cross was for the forgiveness of ALL of our sins, we just have to accept it as finished.

John 3:16

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.