God is not...

1 John 3:1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

God is not flirting with us. He loves each one of us with a deep, passionate ardor that is individual, personal, and intimate. When we responded to the drawing of His love, whether through affection or conviction, He did not then say, “Okay, I've got you signed up. I'll see you in Heaven someday.” He maintains the love relationship with us through communication, speaking to us daily by His Spirit. He has no trouble with commitment.

God does not play charades with us. He communicates with us daily, clearly, in simple, easy-to-understand messages. We may have dreams while we sleep, visions while we pray and seek Him, thoughts while we go about the day praising Him. If you are not clear about the meaning of something, ask Him. If you don't get an answer, it wasn't from God.

God is not playing masquerades with us. He is not hiding Who He is from us. He wants to reveal to us His heart, His will, His love, His plan, Himself. He has given us His written Word, and He sent Jesus, who was the Word incarnate, to show us the Father and demonstrate relationship with Him.

God has pursued us unrelentingly, showing us His majesty in creation and demonstrating His love for us in personal tender private ways. His Word is filled with His love letters to us. But He does not carry on a cold, remote, passionless relationship, without daily communication. We judge what is spoken in our hearts and minds by comparing it to the Scriptures, but the life and the strength that comes to us daily is when He speaks those simple clear messages from the written Word into our hearts.

God is not playing guessing games. If we want to know His heart, He is more than ready to share it. Ask Him, and you may not get the question out of your mouth before He starts answering. He has been waiting all our lives for us to ask those questions, to desire to know Him in that way, to be willing to hear and learn.

God is not into beating us up. If you are feeling condemned, it is not God. He loves you deeply. He put His beloved Son through Hell for our sake. Why would He change His mind part-way through? He does not lie.

God is the morning dew to the fragile meadow flower that is our heart. He is the warm spring sunshine to our wakening, opening, growing spirit. He will not crush a single petal, but will make each leaf, each bud, each bloom grow and open and be fruitful.

God is not setting us up for failure. He wants us to succeed. He wants us to grow and mature, and exercise our spiritual gifts, and work in His kingdom and have fellowship with Him.

The difficulty is often in our reluctance to receive the requirements of the maturing process. The rich young man was recognized by Jesus as having kept the laws and needing only one thing. But he sadly walked away from Jesus, not willing to accept the directions he was given.

We bring what we have to the Lord, and He receives it from us as His children. However, we sometimes feel disappointed, or worse, when He doesn't give it the response we feel it deserves. When He starts taking our accomplishments and thinning them out, cutting them off close to the bottom, discarding them, we forget that He is the Master Gardener, the vine-dresser, our eternally-loving Father who has already given His best for us and is seeking to bring it out in us. We must yield our expectations to Him, our dreams and hopes to Him, our understanding to Him, and walk in faith as He does a work in our lives and our hearts.

Father, thank You for giving us a heart to hear You speak Your love and Your life into our hearts and minds and lives. We know You to be true and trustworthy, never lying and never changing. Thank You for pursuing us and persistently loving us when we have been unlovely. We walk in the beauty and the fragrance of Your love which changes us into the image of Your Son, Jesus

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