One Church Blog

This past weekend was beautiful in Atlanta and I decided to take our girls to our neighborhood tennis courts.  I was suffering from a Nyquil hangover and was getting over a cold so I was even grumpier than usual.  However, I thought that I was covering it up by spending some time with Samantha and Emily.

As we started hitting the balls to one another, I began to give some instructions as to how the girls could improve.   My suggestions were just rolling off of Emily’s back but it was apparent that Samantha was growing more and more frustrated.

I thought Samantha lacked confidence and so I needed to continue to give instruction so that she could succeed and build her confidence.  I thought that I was encouraging her but she wasn’t responding well to anything I had to say.  This just caused me to grow frustrated with her but I continued to try to hide it with my calm Ward Cleaver voice (google it if you don’t know who that is).  The more frustrated I got, the more emotional she became.  It finally came to a head with me yelling and her crying.  I sat down with her and told her how iritated I was because she wouldn’t respond to what I was telling her to do.  What she said next crushed me.

She said that she knew I was irritated.  In fact, she knew that I was irritated before we even got to the courts and she knew that I didn’t really want to be out there.  She was right.

Knowing that’s the way she felt, the whole day made sense.  I Corinthians 13 says that love “is not irritable.”  Sammy wasn’t experiencing my love because I wasn’t expressing it.

So while I thought I was encouraging and instructing, she was hearing discouragement and criticism.  I thought I was building her confidence and pulling her inner tennis player out of her but she was hearing that she was not enough.

Sometimes that’s how I hear God’s voice in my life.  When I’m not resting in his complete love and acceptance of me, I hear his commands and his instructions as criticisms and reminders that I don’t have what it takes.  I’m not enough.

However, when I’m trusting that God is love and I am united with him I hear his voice completely differently.  His commands breathe life into me because they are calling me to who I truly am.  They are not reminders of what I’m not but of who I am.  Instead of defeat and discouragement, they inspire and set me free to live life the way I was designed to live.

It was one of those rainy days several years ago when Melissa and the girls got home.  Emily must have been about 4 or 5 and I could tell that her heart was broken.  She had lost her umbrella while Melissa and Samantha both still had theirs.  As her daddy, I could tell this was about more than an umbrella.  She felt left out and less significant because of it.

So I made it my mission the next couple of weeks to find her an umbrella.  I went to two Walmarts and two Targets but could not find any children’s umbrellas (lady bugs, frogs, flowers, etc.) Any time I had some free time, I went somewhere to look for a stinking umbrella.

After a couple of weeks of futility, we were all together and I told Emily that I had not forgotten and was still looking for her umbrella.  I was a little surprised to see her reaction. Her shoulders shrugged up to her ears as her face flushed and she broke into a great big smile.  She looked at Melissa and said something I will remember the rest of my life.

“Him thinks about me.”

As my heart melted, I remember thinking “of course, I think about you.”  Was there ever a question?  I think about you all of the time.  My life is filled with thougths of you.  They make me smile and they make me shake my head.  They make me dream of the young lady you will become.  They are about what makes you tick, what makes you feel strong and alive and what I can do to help you be the person God wants you to be.  They make me laugh and cry.  They make me feel protective and caring.  They bring delight to my heart and they are sometimes an oasis when life is hard and dry.  To me, there is no more obvious and certain truth than “him thinks about me.”

God is a better father than I am.  Jesus said so.

If I, in my selfishness and limited capacity to love, am driven almost obsessively to show my girls how much I love them, how much I am for them, how much I care about them.  What does that say about how God, the Father, thinks and feels toward us?  Toward you?  Could it be that Him thinks about you?

That would change eveything, wouldn’t it?  You could face the day with confidence that your Father who knows you the best, loves you the most.  His thougths are about you.  His dreams are about you.  His plans are about you.

Him thinks about you.

May we all abide in his love today.  May we live in the freedom of knowing that his thoughts are on us.  May we be so changed by his love that we become obsessed with sharing the message with everyone we know and in any way we can that “him thinks about you.”

…then why can’t I?  By “it,” I mean take some time off and then come back better than ever.  Seriously, I apologize for the inactivity on this blog.  I wish I had some really good reasons but I don’t.  I look forward to sharing my thoughts here more consistently as we explore what it means to serve the world by living loved by God.

On Sunday nights, One Church has been on a journey together through I Corinthians 13:1-7.  Since God is love, we’ve used Paul’s description of love in this passage to lead us not only to learn about love but about the essence of God.  It’s been a surprisingly challenging and amazing journey for me as I’ve wrestled with what I really believe about who God is.

Before the journey, I would have agreed that God is love but I don’t know if I really believed that he is the things that are in the passage.  Do I really believe that he is patient and kind?  Do I really believe that he’s not jealous of things in my life but jealous for my heart on my behalf?  I know that I don’t always live like that is what is true about God.  I often live as if he is the exact opposite of what this passage.

Why do I have such a hard time believing that God is love? A few things come to mind.  First, things happen.  Things that seem unkind or unloving and so I begin to believe the lie that God is unkind and unloving.  Second, I think we’ve been lied to about who God is.  Pastors and preachers have used passages of Scripture to teach me that God is not who he is.  He’s somehow less than love.  That’s not new.  The religious leaders and expert Bible teachers in Jesus’ day totally missed who God is and they used the Bible to support their views.  A God whose essence is love totally bust their doctrinal categories.

What about you?  Are you living your life as if you believe that God is love?  Do you believe that he is for you and that he is on your side?  Have circumstances, other people, and religious lies robbed you of the life and freedom that comes from living loved by God?

Thanks for joining One Church on this blog but we’d also love to have you join us on Sunday nights as we leave lies behind us and journey to the heart of who God is.