When you think of God, is loving something that comes to mind?

Life in the Garden

In the Garden, ages ago, God created man and woman, and he called it very good. Soon thereafter, a serpent, craftier than any of the other animals God had made, tempted the woman (Eve) to eat from a tree God had forbidden her to eat from. As Eve, God’s Beloved, gazed upon this fruit which gently hung upon the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, she weighed her options. Obey the commands of God, or fall prey to the temptations the enemy whispers. After a momentary pause, she lunged toward the fruit, sinking her teeth in and sealing the fate of humanity. Toward the tree and away from God, she bound man to a new legacy of rebellion and rejection of our Creator God. Eve wanted to know what He had withheld, doubting for just a moment that His pure and holy intent of protecting her from this knowledge of good and of evil was part of His plan that was good.

God’s good plan was that we would partner with Him to bring His glory to earth. That we would have deep relationship with our Maker, and honor him in all things. But, because of Eve’s sinister curiosity, humanity fell. Eve rejected God and his good and pleasing and perfect will. As her eyes were opened to her inhabited world, she grew afraid. She grew ashamed. She ran away from the sights of her Creator. As God cried out where are you? Eve hid in shame. She couldn’t bear her own sin, and she so badly hoped she could run away from God and herself.

Shame riddled Eve. The knowledge of good and evil exposed her to the reality of her bare body; she shuddered. Something that was previously an emblem of freedom and life abundant quickly became the source of fear, shame, and unwanted visibility. This awareness drew her into hiding.

Shame is the very currency of hell. It’s the avenue by which the enemy leads us away from our Father. Where God seeks to unify, the enemy seeks to destroy. His actions are always in direct opposition to the heart and desires of God. Thus, because God created us for relationship and intimacy, the enemy strikes against the core of our identity the most. In a world where the enemy seeks to steal, kill, and destroy, being God’s Beloved is constantly under attack. The enemy weasles his way in, convincing us that neither God nor His plans are good. That God doesn’t have the very best for us.

When the enemy can get us to believe that love was not God’s very motivation, we start to doubt God’s word and His promise. But by knowing the word of God and experiencing His love, we are equipped to fight the lie that we are forsaken. God has a plan to restore all things back unto Him, and whether or not we believe it, God will be faithful to it.

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God Makes a Way

As I think about the Garden before the eating of the forbidden fruit, and when I think about Eve shortly thereafter, I hear the refrain dance across my mind once again: this is not how it was supposed to be. And it’s true. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Our eyes were never meant to be open the way they are now. And yet, God had a plan, a way through. And He has been faithful to it from the start.

God sent his one and only son to save the world through him. In John 3:16-17, it is clear His motivation was not bitterness, anger, or unrighteous sorrow, but love. Drawn from His innermost being, in love, Jesus bore our sins in his body on the cross that we may be healed, born again, united with our Father in heaven.

While Eve was hidden away, God crafted a plan to renew what had been broken. Ages later, by sending His son Jesus, God made a way back to intimacy and divine communion, the way it was always meant to be in the garden. In reality, this plan was even better than the Garden because now that Jesus came, lived, died and rose again, God’s spirit dwells in us and we can have access to Him like never before. Intimacy and friendship like never before.

This is why the gospel is called good news.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, not anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

We don’t deserve God’s grace, and yet He gives it.

We don’t deserve His love, and yet we have it.

Believing that Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love is worth fighting for. And it’s an exercise of faith – believing, even when it’s hard, that God is who He says He is.

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Fight to Believe

While some days can be harder than others to fight the lies, knowing the truth of scripture has anchored me. When we know the truth of who God is and what it means to be His Beloved, the enemy lacks a foothold. We can acknowledge a lie we’re believing and replace it with truth, having faith to withstand our worries and fears.

God is love. And He is good. He is compassionate, steadfast and just. He is merciful and He goes before us, and hems us in from behind. He has always been who He is, and will continue to be until the end of the ages.

For some of us, the work is to get to know God’s heart. To get to know how He sees you, so it can anchor you.

For others, the work is putting on the armor of God, naming the lies, and going to war against them.

For all of us, the journey has been primed by the promise of God by which we are held secure.

So often, we come to God when we believe we are doing right by Him, and hide away when we fear we’ve let Him down. We have misunderstood God’s grace and His heart entirely if we’ve believed we must clean up and become a most presentable version of ourselves for Him. None of our stories begin with our choosing God, but with God choosing us. We love not because we’ve found the strength all on our own to do so, but because He first loved us. To love Him back is the only response. When we think His grace, which we have received in place of grace already given, comes at a price not yet paid, we have wildly misunderstood.

Indeed, the blood of Jesus begs to differ.

As Eve hid in shame, God cried out after her, saying where are you? So it is with many of us. Even on our worst days, we can hold fast to the hope that God’s pursuit is relentless. He always makes a way. Even then, even now. Despite our sin, rebellion, and rejection, God has made a way.

Where are you? he says.

God waits. He seeks. He calls out to us by name. Because He loves.

And it doesn’t make sense. And there’s a million reasons why we don’t deserve this good and pure and holy love from our Father. And yet, we have it.

The hardest thing to grasp for many of us is the simple scripture that states God’s character and motivation. God is love. We look at the circumstances in our lives and wonder in disbelief how He could love us when we’ve made so many mistakes. When we’ve wandered so far. When we’ve fallen short. When we’ve forgotten who our God is. When we’ve put other things on the throne, and have allowed our deepest affections to be anchored in things that are not Him. When we haven’t been as good of a friend, sister, wife, mother, daughter, etc as we would have hoped, we’re left wanting. And in our shame, we lose sight of Jesus who has paid it all. Every last penny of the debt we owe God for our rebellion and our rejection of His goodness, the outcome that we earned, paid in full because of Jesus’ body hung on the cross.

In our minds, we think the remedy to our not quite good enoughs and our I messed up agains is being better, and never messing up again. By being perfect. But we never will be. Our brokenness indicates we can only be made whole by the blood of Jesus. We will never be perfect, but we do have a perfect example we get to look to: Christ, the Most Holy One, who graced this earth and died, sinless and spotless.

History has shown us, the Garden has taught us, that we’ve fallen short of the glory of God. It’s in our DNA to rebel, to reject, to fall short, and to run away. Like Eve, I have desired to have something that only belongs in the hands of Christ. And yet, it’s God’s very nature to love, to pursue, and to draw near. The birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is all the evidence we need to believe that God’s love is pure and holy; His heart beats for you and me.

In 1 John 1, it says that if we say we have not sinned, then we have made God out to be a liar. Just simply doing better or vowing to ourselves and others that we’ll never do that one thing again doesn’t actually address the root of the issue which reveals our complete and utter desperation and need for this love that transcends and that only God can provide.

Have you been there before? Not just in the Instagram aesthetic jesus loves you and God is good kind of way, but the *these are my ugly tears and I can’t keep them from coming and I can’t do this on my own and God if you’re listening (*He is) will you help me way?

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Choosing Jesus, the First Time

When I was 18, I remember feeling almost embarrassed walking into a church for the first time in years. **I was paralyzed by fear and shame and for the longest time, I didn’t believe that God was good. So I felt like a fraud opening my heart to the possibility, that maybe, just maybe, He was. But, I had come to the end of myself and I was looking for hope. I desperately needed hope. The discontent, the heartbreak, the searching-but-unsuccessful-in-finding, led me into a Sunday night service at a church plant in my neighborhood during my freshmen year of college, and I remember thinking two things. The first was I don’t belong here. And the second was I’d really like what Christians say about God to be true.

The wrestling that led me to first say yes to church was a heavy one. It was a willingness to let go of all that I had previously believed about myself, the path I had chosen, and the God I thought had forsaken me long ago. To walk into a space where I could encounter the Lord Almighty was intimidating. I was afraid of what I might find. And what He would find within me. I was afraid of the exposure. The inability to hide from holiness.

Like He called out in the Garden to Eve, God called out to me, saying where are you?

Like Eve, I was hidden away in my shame.

But He met me there, and has been faithful to His promise ever since. Some days and seasons are easier than others to believe the good news, but the gospel doesn’t just save us once. It saves us every day. The good news isn’t just good the first time we hear it. It’s good every day.

And so it is with God. He’s not just loving when we have obeyed His good and pleasing and perfect will. He, too, is loving when we’ve rejected Him, have denied Him, have turned away from Him in shame, and have fallen short of His hopes for humanity. In this, we can be encouraged. God has no bad days, takes no days off, and He will never give us just part of Himself. He sent His one and only Son not to condemn the world, but to save it through Him. Because He loves us. And it doesn’t make sense, and yet it’s true.

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Christ Died Because He Loved

Even in our doubt and in our wanderings, we can’t mess up His plans, and we can’t do a thing that would make Him stop loving us. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

When we were dead in our transgressions, Christ died for us.

As we sought to control the outcomes in our lives and rely upon ourselves, Christ died for us.

When we stumble and fall into old patterns we thought we’d been delivered from, He still died for us.

He died for our freedom. For life abundant. For joy and peace and divine communion.

Because of love, Christ died for us.

So, the next time shame feels like it has hidden you, just know that God is seeking you, crying where are you, my Beloved, and nothing can obscure you from His sights.

Where shame tells you to hide, God aches for you to come home.

In our rebellion and in our shame and in our rejection, in our I have it all figured out’s and I am all I need’s, God is waiting patiently, saying come to me.

The gospel is not for those who have it all figured out, it’s for those who recognize their aching need and the one who can fill it. The one who is love embodied.

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Come Home

Christ died for us knowing the precise ways we are broken. He already knows the fears that keep us up at night. That we’ve tried to forget. That we try to hide from those who love us. He already knows.

And He waits patiently for His children to come home.

This was the invitation that shattered me to pieces, that made me confident I wanted to place my faith and trust in Jesus: the promise of an eternal home. As a child of divorce, a word like home can get sticky. Is that my dad’s house? My mom’s? The one where they were still together and we were a true family? Or is it somewhere else, somewhere I haven’t yet been? What is a home?

I have nothing but compassion and gentleness toward my parents for the weight they carried, the-knowing-I-ached-for-something-they-couldn’t-provide and the shuffling between two homes and still trying to make each place feel like a safe and comforting one. I’m not angry, bitter, or upset – in many ways, as I look back, it just left me wanting in the exact right way to help me see Christ was the only one who could truly satisfy the longing in my heart. The place He prepares for us, it’s far better than anywhere we could ever lay our heads here before heaven meets earth again.

As we wander, He waits. He seeks. He calls out to us by name, hoping we’ll accept the invitation again. Because He loves.

As we hide away, God’s pursuit remains.

So it goes for you, on the good days and the bad.

So, even if it’s hard, even if you have reasons as to why this love is too good to be true, seek God and ask Him yourself. Come into His presence, even if you are afraid, and receive His love today. Linger in it tomorrow. Behold it every day after that. His love is the purest form we could ever encounter.

(If you don’t know what to look for, God’s love is gentle and kind. It’s quiet. Comforting. Steadfast and secure.)

(If you don’t know what His voice sounds like, it’s encouraging, peaceful, sanctifying, and never condemning. If shame is multiplied at the sound of this voice, it is not God’s. He calls us higher, but never in a way that brings condemnation).