God the Father does not always show love in ways we expect.
The Father always loves, but some of His actions don’t look like it. If He cannot woo you with kindness, He will prod you with pain.
There are many, many people who do not know the love of God the Father through Jesus Christ and who do not pay any attention to the love the Father already shows them in their ordinary everyday lives. To these people God’s love shows itself in uncomfortable or painful circumstances, designed to awaken them from a sleep that is sending them toward destruction.
John Wimber was a successful man in the music industry until things started to go terribly wrong. His marriage was falling apart and he could find no peace or way out. Finally he went out into the desert and cried out to God to reveal himself. That was what God was aiming at. He answered that prayer and John became a Christian.
A woman I know was married to a man who would beat her when they were both drunk, and she would wake up the next day with bruises. She decided not to drink one night to see what happened and after coming home from a night out with her drunk husband, he threatened her with a knife. She escaped out a window and never returned. But she did return to drinking and hard partying until a workmate told her about Jesus, and out of the pain and desolation she felt, she accepted Jesus as her Lord and Master, and God as her Father.
The same thing often happens in times of prolonged national suffering. Think of China, with its millions of Christians. A guy who attends church here went to visit Samuel Lamb after the worst of China’s hardships had past, and the one thing Samuel Lamb wanted his group to pray for China was more persecution. The church was suffering without it. When people are in pain, they cry out to God to help them and large numbers of people often become followers of Jesus. When they experience no pain, God is an option rather than a necessity.
The same sort of thing happens in a Christian believer’s life. While kids can be cute when they act and talk like children, no one would expect them to remain that way forever. We all expect people to grow up and mature, but for some reason we often don’t think that applies to ourselves – especially as Christian people. The Father can use dramatic or quite small circumstances to help us grow.
I have to say that I lost it with God the other day. Paula and I have wanted to buy a house since we got married last year. We budgeted and at the same time as paying off student loans (HECS for you Aussies) and other debts in NZ we saved a pretty good amount of money. Then we made the mistake of going to the bank. We were told there was no way to buy a house unless we had a down payment of 10%. Well, as hard as we had saved, that amount seemed a long way off, so in between me changing jobs and deciding to up our student loan payments, we made buying a house a little more of a long-term goal.
Not too long ago, we found out that you can actually get a loan with as little as a 3% down payment. What???? So, we decided we would look around almost immediately, while we started a more serious saving plan again.
On the first Saturday we looked we found a place that we hummed and haa-ed about buying, and after a short time we decided we would put in for it. It was much earlier than we intended and we just had 3%. After we made that decision, I rang the real estate lady and was told we needed 5% for this particular house! I’m sorry, but as stupid as it sounds, I lost it with God.
“God, what is this?? I am sick of this mucking around. If we had known about this 3% thing we could have had a house ages ago! And now on the house we decided we’d like to buy, it’s suddenly 5%! Why can’t this be easy?? So much for loving me!”
I honestly expected, and I have to admit that in my heart I still have that expectation – I need to work on it – that if God loves me, He will make things like buying a house, getting a job, and achieving goals easy. It has not proven to be the case. But does that mean that God the Father does not always love? No. He’s loving me by putting me in situations where I can grow up.
Listen to what Hebrews 12:4-11 says:
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons:
“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
How much Bible do we know and how much do we put into practice? Do we pray once for something and then give up, even though God’s Word explicitly says to keep on praying? Do we have the same attitude toward money that the Bible teaches? Have we forgiven people we should forgive? In other words, is there something God’s Spirit is telling you to do that you are not doing? God doesn’t hate you, but in His love he may prod you with pain.
It is ironic that when the Father is showing His love through discipline that is when we most often question His love for us. On the other hand, if He was to let us go on with our lives without discipline, most likely we would praise Him for His love, and yet the lack of discipline puts a question mark over the idea that we are his children through Jesus Christ at all!
What should our response be to this? For many of us, we might be able to put love and discipline together in our heads, but not in our hearts because we have rarely experienced it in our lives. People like us either major on love without the discipline and remain unchanged and immature or we major on discipline without the love and get caught in a crippling spiral of condemnation, knowing in our heads that God is supposed to love us but never really experiencing it in our hearts.
How then do we respond to events in our lives that do not look like they are from a loving Father?
Talk to God. Be honest about how you feel, and decide to trust Him anyway…even though all is against you. Ask Him to show you clearly what He might be trying to say – through the Bible, through His Spirit, through other people – and be willing to change with His loving help. Through it all you will learn to carry on following God in the footsteps of Jesus, who the Bible says was himself perfected through suffering and:
who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb 12:2)
But not every circumstance can easily be explained as loving discipline. That’s where we need to understand the last truth about true Fatherhood I’m going to mention tonight…
God the Father always loves.
God the Father does not always show His love in ways we would expect.
There are many, many people who do not know the love of God the Father through Jesus Christ and who do not pay any attention to the love the Father already shows them in their ordinary everyday lives. To these people God’s love shows itself in uncomfortable or painful circumstances, designed to awaken them from a sleep that is sending them toward destruction.
John Wimber was a successful man in the music industry until things started to go terribly wrong. His marriage was falling apart and he could find no peace or way out. Finally he went out into the desert and cried out to God to reveal himself. That was what God was aiming at. He answered that prayer and John became a Christian.
A woman I know was married to a man who would beat her when they were both drunk, and she would wake up the next day with bruises. She decided not to drink one night to see what happened and after coming home from a night out with her drunk husband, he threatened her with a knife. She escaped out a window and never returned. But she did return to drinking and hard partying until a workmate told her about Jesus, and out of the pain and desolation she felt, she accepted Jesus as her Lord and Master, and God as her Father.
The same thing often happens in times of prolonged national suffering. Think of China, with its millions of Christians. A guy who attends church here went to visit Samuel Lamb after the worst of China’s hardships had past, and the one thing Samuel Lamb wanted his group to pray for China was more persecution. The church was suffering without it. When people are in pain, they cry out to God to help them and large numbers of people often become followers of Jesus. When they experience no pain, God is an option rather than a necessity.
The same sort of thing happens in a Christian believer’s life. While kids can be cute when they act and talk like children, no one would expect them to remain that way forever. We all expect people to grow up and mature, but for some reason we often don’t think that applies to ourselves – especially as Christian people. The Father can use dramatic or quite small circumstances to help us grow.
I have to say that I lost it with God the other day. Paula and I have wanted to buy a house since we got married last year. We budgeted and at the same time as paying off student loans (HECS for you Aussies) and other debts in NZ we saved a pretty good amount of money. Then we made the mistake of going to the bank. We were told there was no way to buy a house unless we had a down payment of 10%. Well, as hard as we had saved, that amount seemed a long way off, so in between me changing jobs and deciding to up our student loan payments, we made buying a house a little more of a long-term goal.
Not too long ago, we found out that you can actually get a loan with as little as a 3% down payment. What???? So, we decided we would look around almost immediately, while we started a more serious saving plan again.
On the first Saturday we looked we found a place that we hummed and haa-ed about buying, and after a short time we decided we would put in for it. It was much earlier than we intended and we just had 3%. After we made that decision, I rang the real estate lady and was told we needed 5% for this particular house! I’m sorry, but as stupid as it sounds, I lost it with God.
“God, what is this?? I am sick of this mucking around. If we had known about this 3% thing we could have had a house ages ago! And now on the house we decided we’d like to buy, it’s suddenly 5%! Why can’t this be easy?? So much for loving me!”
I honestly expected, and I have to admit that in my heart I still have that expectation – I need to work on it – that if God loves me, He will make things like buying a house, getting a job, and achieving goals easy. It has not proven to be the case. But does that mean that God the Father does not always love? No. He’s loving me by putting me in situations where I can grow up.
Listen to what Hebrews 12:4-11 says:
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons:
“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
How much Bible do we know and how much do we put into practice? Do we pray once for something and then give up, even though God’s Word explicitly says to keep on praying? Do we have the same attitude toward money that the Bible teaches? Have we forgiven people we should forgive? In other words, is there something God’s Spirit is telling you to do that you are not doing? God doesn’t hate you, but in His love he may prod you with pain.
It is ironic that when the Father is showing His love through discipline that is when we most often question His love for us. On the other hand, if He was to let us go on with our lives without discipline, most likely we would praise Him for His love, and yet the lack of discipline puts a question mark over the idea that we are his children through Jesus Christ at all!
What should our response be to this? For many of us, we might be able to put love and discipline together in our heads, but not in our hearts because we have rarely experienced it in our lives. People like us either major on love without the discipline and remain unchanged and immature or we major on discipline without the love and get caught in a crippling spiral of condemnation, knowing in our heads that God is supposed to love us but never really experiencing it in our hearts.
How then do we respond to events in our lives that do not look like they are from a loving Father?
Talk to God. Be honest about how you feel, and decide to trust Him anyway…even though all is against you. Ask Him to show you clearly what He might be trying to say – through the Bible, through His Spirit, through other people – and be willing to change with His loving help. Through it all you will learn to carry on following God in the footsteps of Jesus, who the Bible says was himself perfected through suffering and:
who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb 12:2)
But not every circumstance can easily be explained as loving discipline. That’s where we need to understand the last truth about true Fatherhood I’m going to mention tonight…
God the Father always loves.
God the Father does not always show His love in ways we would expect.
posted by Ali at 12:22 AM
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