Have you ever had the worrisome feeling in the pit of your stomach that God is mad at you? I bet you have. I bet you know exactly how it feels to think that God’s upset with you and you’ve failed once again to get His approval. It’s a dull, throbbing kind of sensation - the fear that you’re in trouble with God. I can remember being in school and being sent to the principal’s office or being told that a teacher was going to call my dad. It feels like that, only about a million times worse, because it’s not the principal and it’s not even your dad - we’re talking about God - the One who knows everything. You can’t fool Him and you can’t hide from Him. When you stand before God, you stand before Him utterly exposed. You are what you are and He knows it. What will He say about you? What sentence will He pronounce over the mess that is these hearts of ours? Well, in Luke 4, Jesus read a section of the Old Testament prophecy of Isaiah. He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for He has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.” After Jesus read this, He said, “I am fulfilling this Scripture today.” The thing that’s so cool is that the word “favor” that Jesus used is a word that means ‘acceptance’ and ‘welcome.’ We’re not in trouble with God. Jesus has accepted us completely and is welcoming us with arms wide open.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment