Do I Love God – Does God Love Me?

"Mom, do you love God?" Jenny's question took me aback. Sure we were confused and going through a hard time we couldn't understand but of course I loved God. As I looked into her questioning eyes though my own filled with tears as I heard myself hoarsely whisper, "I don't know. I don't feel like I love Him or that He loves me. I feel like He's a stranger I can't relate to." We both cried together unable to sort it out.

Awhile later, Jim came in and I related what had happened. He enabled Jenny and me to see we were living in our feelings. I think in our culture love is considered a feeling when actually it is a way of life a demonstration. For God demonstrated His love for us in that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners (Rom. 3:8) a fact, not a feeling. And Jim asked me a very crucial question. "Do you obey God?" "Yes, as much as I am aware I do." "Well then you love Him for it says in John 14:21 it is those who obey Him that love Him." I cried with relief because while all my feelings told me I did not love God and He did not love me, both God's and my demonstration and commitment said otherwise. Because of our often wrong concept of what love is and feels like, many marriages fail, Christians turn on God and friends betray one another. We are creatures of feeling but we cannot base our relationships on them.

Let me tell you some of what brought this all on. A few years ago I wrote a letter in which I described how my body was a picture of the Body of Christ. I looked good on the surface but underneath was nerve and tissue damage from MS and medicine. This caused much pain and kept my body from working properly. But now, as I look at my body, it no longer looks good. Parts are visibly wasted and deformed, fluid swells other parts, growths and open sores are where all can see them.

And in just the last three years I thought of how it has been in the Body of Christ. Between our mailing list and co workers here at Huntington Beach twenty friends have died, the majority very prematurely! Many more are seriously ill. Marriages of close friends have disintegrated church people and missionaries. Children have openly rebelled church and missionary kids. Almost every one of Jenny's high school friends have fallen sexually. Yes the Body is in trouble and it doesn't look good anymore.

The response of many Christians has been to accept this as the time we live in. Others have just tried to "declare" it all away with boasts in the Lord that remind me of the story of the Emperor's new clothes (who was naked though he believed himself beautifully clothed). But many have cried out to God as never before. Church picnics, concerts and even a few "make us feel good" visitations of God just aren't doing it. We need God with us Emmanuel not just at an occasional Sunday service but continuously. And although all this tragedy has gone far beyond what I ever imagined when I began praying for revival years ago, I still believe we will see His deliverance. For the great revival described in Jer. 30 31 (which I believe is a pattern for the coming one) starts with a day of trouble such as Jacob had never known but with the promise of deliverance at last. Are we there yet? I don't know but I hope so. God had set His own Hand against His people not because He hated them but because He wanted them to put their trust in Him alone. By the time He came to deliver them they were afraid and scattered after trusting in many other things which had all failed them. And as the idols of today medicine, psychology, education, money are failing us, we too are left with only one place to go.

Maybe you feel besieged and God seems far away. I hear from so many Christians in that place. Let me give you two things to think about. The first is Job's famous statement in Job 15:13, "Though He slay me yet will I trust Him." The Lord recently opened up to me what Job was really saying. He was confused, hurt, afflicted and tormented. God was a stranger to Him. In Job 13:3 (Amplified) he said, ".. I desire to argue my case with God that He may explain the conflict between what I believe of Him and what I see of Him." In that chapter Job basically said, "I don't know what God is like. I thought I did but what I see tells me He is not as I believed but I refuse to take my life into my own hands. Whether God is good or bad I have no other Name to call on He alone is God." The Amplified version says, "Though He slay me yet I will wait for and trust Him and behold, He will slay me; I have no hope; nevertheless I will maintain and argue my ways before Him." I think that's how I felt that morning Jenny asked me if I loved God it seemed like all I know and have believed was contradicted by what I see yet where else can I go Lord? You alone have the words of eternal life.

The other story to ponder is John the Baptist. He prepared the way of the Lord, devoting his whole life to that calling. God personally told him how to recognize Jesus and John saw the Dove descend and heard God Himself declare Jesus was His Son. Yet when Jesus began ministering, John was not picked to be a disciple. Furthermore he never saw a miracle performed or got to do one but ended up in prison. There, he questioned if Jesus was the Christ think of that God had shown him but he questioned because of what he now saw and felt. How must he have felt about himself and his calling? He had prepared the way and stepped aside for who? The wrong one? Can you imagine the sense of loss and failure John must have felt about his own life and calling? But he was not wrong and of him Jesus testified, "No greater man was ever born of a woman."

Dear ones, are you suffering with no end in sight? Or has some calling you once knew was from God seemed to have completely failed? Does it feel like all you've ever done and lived for perhaps wasn't even from the Lord? Does He seem strange and far off not what you believed? Draw encouragement from Job and John. They are both highly commended to us by the Lord Himself in His Word yet they faced the blackest night of the soul the "what if He isn't who He said He is" and came through. And so will you and so will we by God's grace. So no matter what happens, trust Him and don't give up!!

Now may the Lord bring His release and raise up His Church and renew His children and may we go on to serve Him in power. Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus. Amen. We love and appreciate you.