Hey Jude

This weekend, I heard a sermon at our church on Jude from CJ Mahaney. The sermon really opened up my eyes to something that I had been struggling with. For some reason, I couldn't shake the fact that I had failed so many times the past week, be it by not getting the grade that I wanted, or for getting repeatedly distracted while trying to work on assignments. Why couldn't I see the riches of God's grace on me? Why did it matter so much what other people said about me, or how I felt I had fallen short of what I should be?

In his sermon, CJ preached on Jude 1b, "To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ." It was the second point, "beloved in God the Father" that stirred my heart. We often have hard thoughts about God. We think that He is merely tolerating us but really is disappointed in us. We think that we are chosen, but without much enthusiasm, like the last kids to get chosen for a sports team. We need this assurance that we are much loved. Not only that we are much loved, but specifically that we are enthusiastically and with much affection loved by God because He IS love.

Because we don't believe that God would love someone who is completely unlovable, we look inside ourselves for some reason that God would want to love us. It's almost as if we had to repay God for His unconditional love by earning it back. It dawned on me that I was trying to pay God back for His love. I wouldn't just take it at face value but felt that I had to prove my worth. I always knew that I was justified, but for me that was only enough to bring me back to "0" in terms of my debt. My justification, lived out in my life, only meant that I wasn't subject to God's wrath, but it didn't mean that I was loved with the infinite affection and joy of a loving God.

CJ said that often people will say, "Why would God love me?" and he has to answer, "I haven't got a clue." If we look for a reason that God would love us that is inside of us, there is none. Be amazed at God's grace and not in a false hope in ourselves. We are only worthy of wrath. Let's not look within from our pride. Piper says, "Our biggest challenge is to feel love since we are so unworthy." We will always be unworthy but we will always be loved by God. Something that was mentioned in our prayer group was that if we only realized that God really loved us, we would be totally changed, and I would heartily agree. I thank God for showing me this truth, and for casting some much needed light into this hidden dark area in my life.