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The God Who Can Be Hurt….. He is your God, you are His!
The Good Shepherd, carrying His own.
Devotional Thought of the Day:
3 “Worship no god but me. 4 “Do not make for yourselves images of anything in heaven or on earth or in the water under the earth. 5 Do not bow down to any idol or worship it, because I am the LORD your God and I tolerate no rivals. Exodus 20:3-5 (TEV)
1 The LORD said to me, “Go again and show your love for a woman who is committing adultery with a lover. You must love her just as I still love the people of Israel, even though they turn to other gods and like to take offerings of raisins to idols.”
Hosea 3:1 (TEV)
441 You are hurt by your neighbor’s lack of charity toward you. Think how God must be hurt by your lack of charity—of love—toward him!
I have sat with many people who are angry, who blame God for the pain and brokenness in their lives. Living with such pain, they get mad at God; they will claim it is His fault, or that He has abandoned them, they strike out at Him.
My temptation is to try an answer for God before they are ready to hear the answer or defend the God who needs no defense. Thankfully, He is patient with me, because He is not willing for them to perish.
And I think we need to see that, this God who is patient, this God who is merciful, this God whose goal is reconciliation and restoration.
We need to see a God who hurts when He is betrayed, who hurts when people are unfaithful, and who embraces that pain to provide an opportunity for those who hurt Him to experience again His incredible love, His limitless mercy, and the abundance of peace.
Yeah, we can hurt God, we can turn our back on Him. He hurts when our pain our anxiety, and the pressures of life seem to drive us away from Him. When we hurt so much, we ignore His presence, and refuse to let Him comfort us. He is there, hurting with us, trying to comfort us anyway, trying to heal us, trying to get us to listen, to be still and know He is God.
So how do we minister on behalf of a hurting God, to people who are hurt? As He does, with great patience, comforting them, allowing them to know they have a refuge, a place to rest, and when they are ready, revealing that to be no less that God Himself.
He is with them, He is with us, AMEN!
Escriva, Josemaria. The Way (Kindle Locations 1086-1087). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
A Godly Paradox: The Blessing of a Angry, Jealous God
Devotional Thought of the Day:
1 GOD, you smiled on your good earth! You brought good times back to Jacob! 2 You lifted the cloud of guilt from your people, you put their sins far out of sight. 3 You took back your sin-provoked threats, you cooled your hot, righteous anger. 4 Help us again, God of our help; don’t hold a grudge against us forever. 5 You aren’t going to keep this up, are you? Scowling and angry, year after year? 6 Why not help us make a fresh start—a resurrection life? Then your people will laugh and sing! 7 Show us how much you love us, GOD! Give us the salvation we need! 8 I can’t wait to hear what he’ll say. GOD’s about to pronounce his people well, The holy people he loves so much, so they’ll never again live like fools. Psalm 85:1-8 (MSG)
1 I hope you will put up with a little more of my foolishness. Please bear with me. 2 For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. I promised you as a pure bride to one husband—Christ. 3 But I fear that somehow your pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted, just as Eve was deceived by the cunning ways of the serpent. 4 You happily put up with whatever anyone tells you, even if they preach a different Jesus than the one we preach, or a different kind of Spirit than the one you received, or a different kind of gospel than the one you believed. 2 Corinthians 11:1-4 (NLT)
We find in scripture many mysteries, many things that we can know, but never quite understand. There are also things that we label paradox, the things we can understand, yet seem, not quite right, perhaps a little unbelievable.
The concept of a jealous God fits that last category, and if we don’t work through it, we will never understand His anger, and why He threatens and pours out His wrath.
If we do understand why God is a jealous God, if we understand why He is angry, there is a wonderful blessing to be known. A simple blessing.
Here it is:
You don’t get jealous, you don’t get angry when a relationship is stepped all over, or worse, ignored, unless you care, and care deeply.
God’s anger, God’s jealousy is proof of how much He loves us, how much He cares, how he longs to show us His mercy and love.
But this seems paradoxical at first. So take a moment, stop, breath a few times and think it through,
We like the fact that God is patient with us, but does patience have a cost? Of course it does. It means that God is willing to wait until we remember He is there, until we come to our senses, until the Holy Spirit’s work is done.
We like the fact that God is willing to go to extremes to bring us back to Him. Searching for us, (even though He knows where we are), calling to us; sending us messengers prophets and evangelists, and shepherds to rescue us and guide us,
Foreknowledge doesn’t turn God into some kind of metaphysical robot, It doesn’t take away the pain of the times we rebel, of the times we walk away, the times we choose to sin rather then revel in His love and care. While He knows the outcome, that doesn’t relieve the sorrow He knows as we spend time away from Him, as we spend time like the prodigal, dirty and muddy and hungry for something that will sustain us.
God wants this intimate relationship with us, He wants to care for us, to be our God, we His beloved children.
When stuff gets in the way of this relationship, when we create other things that would take His place, that we trust in, that we place our hopes in, He would destroy them. And someday He will. Yet for those who trust in Him, the wrather and anger that we deserve, that we are owed. God dealt with that too, and poured out all His anger and wrath, because He desires this, and was jealous of how we spend our time and energy, by nailing Jesus to the cross.
In doing so, we can be restored, the jealousy fades and we become what He desires more than anything…. HIs family.
Rejoice that we are in the hands of an angry God….. and realize that His desire for us is a blessed thing!
