If God is anything at all, He is faithful. He won’t let us down. He’ll always be there. Betrayal is the farthest thing from His mind. And though we might not be able to figure out why, He really does love us all, and it hurts Him to have those He has created reject Him.

         And we think, how in the world can God be all-powerful and strong and yet so easily hurt by mere human beings? Maybe it’s because He’s not the big bad unfeeling ogre some people think He is. He really can be touched by our pain and feelings of helplessness.

         But He also knows that freedom comes with a price and He can’t be there every five seconds to protect us from every little happenstance. There is no growth in that. God puts a very high price on maturity and maturity demands pain. There is simply no other way.

         Now, He does watch over us, and He often protects us, but His goal for us is to grow and be like Him. He is not in the business of having perpetual children who never grow up. Why in the world would He want that? WE don’t want that. So the way things are make life tough.

         But He wants us to be up to the challenge. He has chosen that we enter this world in a completely helpless state. He has chosen the way of growth. Any intelligent person would eventually discover that if he or she was in God’s shoes it would be done in the same way.

         But whatever happens, because God is loving and kind, it never means that anything lousy is permanent, or else He would not have made a way for miracles. He would not allow the possibility of a sunrise chasing away the darkness of night. And he has made His Holy Spirit available to help and comfort us.

         Christianity 101 is this: Our Lord Jesus is God, and God is Love, and Love is good.

         There is no doubt that the circumstances of this life can be bad, but God is not bad. And when God is summoned in faith He shows up, and He chases away darkness and a lack of hope. He blesses us with strength and will often help us open a door, so we might go in where the life is.

         I have found that when we are serious about God, God will be serious about us. There is a clear connection between giving ourselves completely to God and God giving Himself completely to us. He is a lover, and He believes in love. And He knows love is a 100% commitment and never anything less. Therefore, if someone wants to mess around on God and give Him anything less than what He has already given to us, that someone better not expect anything from God.

         If you have never been hurt in love you have never lived, so why would we expect to treat God in such a way? If it isn’t fun for us, why would it be fun for Him?

         We are truly made in the image of God, and if anyone loses track of this, our Lord Jesus is the perfect image of God in human form to always remind us. Jesus is God. Did He not provide the greatest expression of love in paying our way out of sin?

         “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” [John 15:13] [1] 

         If that’s not love, there is no love. The greatest love is giving oneself for another. One will find that when he does for God what God has done for him, he will know God.

         Such giving creates a pure heart. Selfishness, however, creates a cold and evil heart. This pretty much explains everything, doesn’t it?

         Our Lord is 100% Love, 100% faithful, and a 100% giver, and these are the kind of people He relates to.

         One will never go wrong in giving his or her entire heart to the Lord Jesus.

         In fact, one could never do anything more right.

         © 2012 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved.