#Sometimes I also worry I'll come across all 'holier than thou' with these kinds of posts

[theriu]

Something I struggle with worrying whether a message I share about God will be taken wrong because someone takes it in for the wrong reasons.

Like, God is just AND merciful; He brings judgement AND forgiveness. So when I speak of His love and mercy and forgiveness and compassion; how He holds His arms out to us sinners and tells us He desires relationship with us; how we are saved by grace and not by works; how He DELIGHTS in His children and works all things for their good - there’s always the chance someone already full of the wrong kind of self-love, unaware of their own pride and arrogance and selfishness, will see that and go, “Psh, of course, I’m super loveable. God has good taste and just wants me to be happy, I don’t need to change a thing.”

But when I share about how God is holy and perfect, and that we ALL have sinned and offended the most infinite and perfect of beings, and even the smallest sin has infinite consequences because of this; how we continue to willfully PILE ON our transgressions against God, abusing the free will He gave us to pursue our own selfish desires, and how the only just consequence is death and separation from God - there is the chance that someone who struggles with their sense of self-worth, who is suffering from depression and low self-esteem, who might even BE a Christian already but feel the weight of false judgement and legalism, might still be consumed with thoughts of, “You’re right, I’m a failure, I’m worthless, God probably doesn’t REALLY love ME. I can try all I want, but I’ll never be good enough to deserve His forgiveness.”

And both of these reactions are wrong, because they forget the other half of the message! God is just AND merciful; God punishes the wicked AND gives grace to the repentant. God sent His own Son to save us by dying in our place - the death of one who is infinite and perfect, which is the only sacrifice capable of paying for the sins of billions of finite, sinful humans who CANNOT do enough “good deeds” to counteract the infinite consequences of our sins. And then He rose again, defeating death, offering His gift to us so that we can be reunited with our Creator! He did this because He LOVES US - not because of anything we can do, but because He MADE us to be united with Him as His children, for all eternity!

But we have to accept it; we have to acknowledge His gift, just as a person being given medicine for a fatal disease has to actually take the medicine. Love cannot exist without free will, and free will means we can reject His love and accept the consequences of our sins ourselves - the consequence of eternal separation from God, who is the source of ALL that is good - instead of giving our sinful nature over to Christ’s sacrifice. And even when we have accepted Jesus’ sacrifice, we must understand that this is not carte blanche permission to continue living in sin, for true repentance means you turn AWAY from sin and put Your trust and obedience in God, obeying Him as an expression of love.

But if you give your heart to Jesus and choose to trust in Him as your Lord, you HAVE been made worthy! You will still struggle - Jesus said Himself that, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” We will continue to struggle with our fleshly habits and desires, because this world is broken. But the more we lean on the Holy Spirit and trust in Him for help, the more we will find HE is transforming our hearts to be more like Jesus. We CANNOT fix ourselves - we can only trust the Lord and practice what He has instructed us, and eventually we WILL see that we are improving! Praise the Lord, for He is patient, and He understands our weakness - He experienced it Himself by becoming a man and living among us. We will all stumble, but so long as we turn back to Him, He will keep guiding us and teaching us discipline that leads to true freedom - freedom from our harmful habits and thought patterns that cause us so much grief and hurt our relationships.

It is hard to share the full complexity of Christ in one message. And as demonstrated above, even a simplified version can get long, which isn’t always accessible to our modern short attention spans. But I am trying to remember that ultimately, I can trust that God will get the right message to the right people. Yes, somewhere along the way will be those who see a message of Truth, and the Devil tries to twist it so that they misunderstand and shrink further away from God, like the crows and weeds from the seed parable (Matthew 13). But God is always at work in our hearts, and He is working so that those whose hearts are open even a tiny bit will hear His call, and those whose hearts are hard might still soften and be saved from judgement. He hears our prayers and uses them to further His good will.

I pray that, ultimately, “Your words would be heard, Lord, not mine.” I don’t remember who advised me of that, but I think it is a powerful prayer. May people hear Your words and ignore any of mine that aren’t in line with what You want to say, Lord. Amen.