gladitudes

Psalm 18:3

I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
and I am saved from my enemies.

My God is worthy of praise. When I call on Him, he will save me because of his love and grace. This gives me great hope and courage.

1 John 2:3-6

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

I think this passage is pretty self-explanatory, so I don’t know how much reflection I need to provide. It’s just really convicting for me.

The one thing I’ll say is this. I think it is possible to be saved, but not really know God. God himself and a relationship with Him is the far and wide best thing that exists and being given Him is the ultimate blessing that humans can receive. Not knowing our Almighty God when it’s offered to us, is an epic fail on our part. In a sense, too, it blocks us from truly enjoying anything else God blesses us with.

How do we get to know God? Well, we start by obeying Him…

There are some things that you hear so often that it’s hard to even know what they mean. One of those things for me is about God’s love. If you’ve grown up in Christian circles or spent time with Christians, hopefully you’ve heard that God loves you. I know I did. The problem, though, is that I heard that so much that I never really stopped to consider what it meant.

Over the past years of my life, I’ve found myself more and more wanting to understand what God’s love really is. In that time I’ve done a lot of thinking and reading and here are a couple thoughts I’ve had. Take a read:

1.) Love isn’t just a feeling. In our culture we think of love as something you feel—more or less feeling good about someone. If God’s love for us was just Him feeling good about us, it would be nice, but it wouldn’t really be life-changing. I feel good about a lot of people and things and it usually doesn’t result in anything other than a smile here and there. But, that’s not what love is. Yeah, love involves feelings for sure, but love is way more than that. True love is a decision and commitment to put someone else’s interests above your own. It’s acting to benefit another above one’s self.

Love understood in this light is profoundly different! God does not just feel good about us, God actively seeks out our best interests. If you haven’t thought about that before, take a second to let it sink in. The Almighty God takes real action to help you and bring about good in your life. You might not see the good and you might not see all your circumstances as good, but it’s there and it’s true.

2.) God’s love for us affects His emotions. Love isn’t a feeling, but it does involve feelings. This is pretty cool to me, in fact, a realization of this is what is prompting my writing today. Check this out:

Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV)

The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.

God isn’t just some stoic, uninvolved power force. I want to unpack this verse for a second. Look at it by line:

1. The LORD your God is in your midst – This means that He is near to us. He’s not far off and uninvolved, but rather He is close and he cares.
2. [God is] a mighty one who will save – God is mighty to save and He, in His love, has saved us. We have this problem of sin—we think we’re better than God and that we don’t need him. Sin, though, destroys us because good can only come from God. God hates sin because he loves us so much that he hates seeing us be destroyed and missing out on good. God sent his Son, Jesus, to die that He might rescue us from the consequences of our sin, and bring us back into right relationship with Him. That’s intense love.
3. [God] will rejoice over you with gladness – God rejoices over us; in His proactive love, He is excited and full of joy. He doesn’t resent us, He’s not disappointed in us. Rather, He is glad that He made us and that we are His creation.
4. [God] will quiet you by his love – I have to read into this a little bit, but saying that “He will quiet you” implies there’s anguish and maybe some hurt. God longs to bring us peace and comfort through his love. Incidentally, this also alludes to how deeply He cares about us and our circumstances.
5. [God] will exult over you with loud singing – Have you ever heard some really good news (like a favorite sports team victory, a great job offer, etc.) and just started shouting for joy? I know I have. That is how God feels about us every single day. He’s that excited. Sounds crazy? I think it does, but when you love someone, you do crazy things… and God loves someone… everyone, actually.

To me the notion that God gets excited or that He shouts for joy is pretty crazy. But, I know that I feel things, and I get excited, and I shout for joy. Maybe we feel those things because God feels those things. And maybe, too, God gave us those emotions so that we would better understand Him and how He feels about us. Think about it.

God cares about us deeply; He proactively works to bring about good for us; and He shouts with joy over us because His love for us is so intense that it fills Him with excitement. That is what it means when people say, “God loves you.” :)

This morning I was reading Psalm 94 and was really struck by how precisely applicable this passage was to a few current events I see. Take a read:

Psalm 94:14-23

For the LORD will not forsake his people;
he will not abandon his heritage;
15 for justice will return to the righteous,
and all the upright in heart will follow it.

16 Who rises up for me against the wicked?
Who stands up for me against evildoers?
17 If the LORD had not been my help,
my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.
18 When I thought, “My foot slips,”
your steadfast love, O LORD, held me up.
19 When the cares of my heart are many,
your consolations cheer my soul.
20 Can wicked rulers be allied with you,
those who frame injustice by statute?
21 They band together against the life of the righteous
and condemn the innocent to death.
22 But the LORD has become my stronghold,
and my God the rock of my refuge.
23 He will bring back on them their iniquity
and wipe them out for their wickedness;
the LORD our God will wipe them out.

I really don’t want to get political on here, but I guess I will just say that there is a lot of injustice in our world—and not just overseas or in a far corner of the country. There’s a lot of injustice in your and my neighborhoods. Whether it’s the life of unborn children being brutally snuffed out, people’s hard-earned tax money being spent foolishly, or anything in between, we are suffering. We might not know it yet, but this world is not functioning the way it was intended to function.

This condition of our world weighs on me. I see it, I feel it, and it hurts as I watch people suffer from it. Verse 16 really echos a cry of my heart; I wonder who will rise of against the wicked? Verse 19, too, really is my heart as well. When my cares are many, God is the only one that really cheers my soul. I know I can hope in His steadfast love and I will not be let down or forsaken.

Verses 20-21, again, I feel are so applicable for what I think about. I see political leaders making foolish and often wicked decisions and I wonder why God has allowed them to be in power. They do appear to band together in corruption and leverage for things I truly believe are evil. Again, though, God is my stronghold and I am thankful that He will bring justice. When people die and face Him in judgement, they/we will all give an account. I can rest assured that no injustice will go unpunished, no wrongdoing will be left unaccounted for.

While this is a truly sobering thought (because we ALL sin and NONE of us is perfect), it’s also comforting as my heart yearns for justice. I am so thankful that God has redeemed me by the blood of Jesus Christ and that he offers redemption and salvation to all who will humbly turn to Him. I am glad that through Jesus, God has offered a way for us to have our Sin forgiven so that we don’t have to face the painful day of judgement in the same way. My hope, of course, is that everyone would repent and be forgiven (including those political leaders I here refer to), but knowing that not all will, I am comforted that justice will be served.