A few months ago I had an interesting email conversation with a woman who has attended our church for a few years. She told me that she hadn’t been coming for a while because of some personal issues that were going on. When I asked her to clarify what she meant, she said basically coming to church had become too painful for her. “You see”, she said, “it doesn’t seem to matter what I do to try and please God, whenever I come to church I feel like I’m not doing enough. I feel like I can never make God happy no matter how hard I try. So I just stopped coming.”
I know how she feels, or at least I think I do. As a life-long people pleaser and rule follower and rule enforcer, I know what it feels like to wonder if I’ll ever really become the person God wants me to be. It is easy to feel like being a Christian is hard work all the time and it never lets up and then you die and then it finally becomes good.
Let me do a little experiment. I’m going to say two propositions. Going with your first instinct, I want you to raise you hand if you agree. Don’t take time to analyze – just go with your first reaction. Here we go…
God loves you.
Ok, try this one… God likes you.
Somehow we buy into this idea that God loves us, but it’s some sort of “Christian” type of love that means He loves us because He is supposed to or because He has to. It’s the kind of love that brothers and sisters are forced to say they have for each other. But for us to say that God likes us…that makes us stop and think. Does God really like me? Does he generally like people?
To some of us, the idea that God likes us is a scandalous thought. After all, how can God (holy, perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful) really like anything about us in our unholiness, imperfection, un-knowing, un-powerful selves?
If the idea that God likes you seems somehow disrespectful or too familiar, I hope to encourage you with a few stories from scripture. My motivation for trying to change your thinking on this subject is probably deeper than the title of my message seems. I really want you to know God better. And I want you to discover an important key to having a great relationship with him. The problem is, if we try to please God without having a real relationship with him, we’ll get burned out quick – and we’ll fail every time.
I’ve been reading a book that a good friend recommended to me. It’s “Blue Like Jazz” by Donald Miller. Miller addresses this problem…
Don Miller, Blue Like Jazz, p. 77
Ultimately, we do what we love to do. I like to think that I do things for the right reasons, but I don’t, I do things because I do or don’t love doing them. Because of sin, because I am self-addicted, living in the wreckage of the fall, my body, my heart, and my affections are prone to love things that kill me. [My friend] Tony says Jesus gives us the ability to love the things we should love, the things of Heaven. Tony says that when people who follow Jesus love the right things, they help create God’s kingdom on earth, and that is something beautiful.
I found myself trying to love the right things without God’s help, and it was impossible. I tried to go one week without thinking a negative thought about another human being, and I couldn’t do it. Before I tried that experiment, I thought I was a nice person, but after trying it, I realized I thought bad things about people all day long, and that, like Tony says, my natural desire was to love darkness.
My answer to this dilemma was self-discipline. I figured I could just make myself do good things, think good thoughts about other people, but that was no easier than walking up to a complete stranger and falling in love with them. I could go through the motions for a while, but sooner or later my heart would testify to its true love: darkness. Then I would get up and try again. The cycle was dehumanizing.
So, what do we do when we find that our feeble efforts to live up to God’s standards – his law – only end up making us feel miserable? The answer, at least a part of the answer, is in understanding God’s heart toward us. A few pages later in the book Miller shares about his pastor at a church in Portland:
Don Miller, Blue Like Jazz, p. 85-86
On a given Sunday there are dozens of nonbelievers at our church, and each week [Pastor] Rick shares with them the patient love of God. He talks about Jesus as if he knows Him, as if he has talked to Him on the phone earlier that morning. Rick loves God because he accepts God’s unconditional love first.
Rick says that I will love God because he first loved me. I will obey God because I love God. But if I cannot accept God’s love, I cannot love Him in return, and I cannot obey Him. Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God’s love will. The ability to accept God’s unconditional grace and ferociousl love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return. Accepting God’s kindness and free love is something the devil does not want us to do. IF we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers, we will never amount to anything, this is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not love her. This is not the voice of God. God woos us with kindness, He changes our character with the passion of His love.
…Our “behavior” will not be changed long with self-discipline, but fall in love and a human will accomplish what he never thought possible. The laziest of men will swim the English channel to win his woman. I think what Rick said is worth repeating that by accepting God’s love for us, we fall in love with Him, and only then do we have the fuel we need to obey.
So let me try and connect the dots for you a bit.
1. The only way to obey God over the long haul is to love him.
2. The first step to loving Him is to receive His love for you.
3. The first step to receiving his love for you is to understand he likes you.
How then do we begin to understand that God likes us – that is, that he really wants to spend time with us; that he thinks we’re cool enough to hang around with? We go to the stories in the gospels that tell us about Jesus and his attitude toward people. After all Jesus is God in the flesh – so the way he interacted with people should show us how God feels about people – and in particular how he feels about each of us individually. Let’s take a look at the evidence.
HE LIKES CHILDREN.
Mark 10:13-16 People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.
Children don’t have a lot to offer. They just are themselves. They don’t put on airs or try to cover up who they really are. Maybe that’s part of what Jesus was talking about when he said the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. He really wants us to come to him just the way we are and come sit on his lap and get blessed by him. It’s a nice image isn’t it?
HE LIKES EVEN THOSE WHO WOULD FAIL HIM.
Mark 10:17-24 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good — except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”
20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”
21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
23 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”
24 The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!
So here’s this guy who ends up failing big time. He has a divided heart, like I do (I don’t think I would have passed the test Jesus gave him.) But when Jesus looks at him, wanting to know how to inherit eternal life, and with his life of good works, he loved him. He probably could predict that the young man was not going to pass the test – but he loved him all the same. Actually I think he liked him, too.
HE LIKED BEING AROUND “UNHOLY” PEOPLE
Luke 7:34 “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and “sinners.”’
This is one of those verses that just floors me whenever I think about it. Most Christians, myself included, don’t want to spend too much time with people who are gluttons and drunkards or just seem to enjoy life too much. We’re afraid of getting our reputation soiled, or of falling into sinful behavior. But Jesus liked these people. He liked them so much he was accused of being one of them.
Don’t get me wrong – he doesn’t want us to become “sinful”. All I’m saying is that he likes people without them having to get all cleaned up first.
HE LIKED YOU BEFORE YOU DID ONE THING FOR HIM
Rom. 5:6-11 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
So I hope you’re beginning to see that not only does God love you. He likes you. He wants the very best for you. He desires to have a relationship with you. If you lived in Judah in the time of Jesus, you could have seen him interacting with real, ordinary people like you and me. Touching people, instructing people, laughing with people, enjoying life with people. Because he likes people!
As I wrap up my comments now, we’re going to move into a time of communion.
As the elements are served today, and we remember Jesus blood poured out for our sins and his body suffering to take our punishment, I want you to simply reflect upon the idea that Jesus liked you enough to do that.
He didn’t do it because of all you offer him. He didn’t do it because of all the things you can or are doing for him. He did it because he likes you. May you understand that in a deeper way – and may that prompt you to receive his love so that you might be able to love him back.
