The root cause of all our spiritual problems lies in our not knowing God
as a Loving Father and a Sovereign God. One truth that has
revolutionized my Christian life is the glorious revelation that Jesus
gave us that the Father loves
us just as He loved Him. Jesus prayed to the Father, ".....that the
world may know that Thou didst love them,
EVEN AS THOU DIDST LOVE ME."(Jn.17:23) Jesus prayed here that the world
around us might know this truth. But it has to grip our hearts first,
before the world can realize it.
All Christians believe theoretically in a loving Father in heaven. But
the fact that they are often worried and anxious
and so full of insecurity and fear, proves that they don't believe it
deep down in their hearts. There are fewer still
who would dare to believe that God loves them AS MUCH AS HE LOVES JESUS!
None of us could dare to believe such a truth if Jesus had not plainly
told us that it was so. Once your eyes are opened to this glorious
truth, it will change your whole outlook on life. All murmuring and
depression and gloom will vanish from your life altogether. I know this
can happen, for it happened in my life.
This is now the unshakeable foundation of my life: GOD LOVES ME JUST AS
HE LOVES JESUS. It's not because you don't fast and pray sufficiently
that you are not entering into the victorious life. Victory comes, not
through self-effort but through faith. "Faith in what?", you may ask.
Faith in God's perfect love for you. Many believers live under the
condemnation of Satan who keeps telling them, "You are not fasting
enough. You are not praying enough. You are not witnessing enough. You
are not studying the Bible enough", etc., etc., They are constantly
being whipped up by such thoughts into an endless round of activity and
into a multitude of dead works. Do you realize that all your
self-discipline, fasting, praying, tithing and witnessing are dead
works, if they do not originate in love for God? And they cannot
originate in love unless you are secure in God's love first. Paul's
prayer for the Christians at Ephesus was that they might be rooted and
grounded in the love of God. (Eph. 3:16,17).
The world is full of people who are looking for someone to love them.
Many Christians go from church to church, wanting to be loved. Some seek
for love in friendships and some in marriage. But all this search can
end in disappointment. Like orphans, the children of Adam are insecure
and as a result are again and again overcome by bouts of self-pity. The
sad thing is that even after conversion, many still remain insecure,
when there is no need for them to be so. What is the answer of the
gospel to this problem? The answer is to find our security in the love
of God. Jesus repeatedly told His disciples that the hairs on their head
were all numbered and that a God Who fed the millions of birds and
clothed the millions of flowers would certainly take care of them. A
greater argument than all of that, is: "He who did not spare His own Son
but gave Him up freely for us, how shall He not with Him also freely
give us ALL THINGS " (Rom.8:32). As God cared for Jesus, He will care
for you too.
One reason why God allows us at times to be disappointed with our fellow
human beings is so that we might learn to stop leaning on man. He
desires to free us from such idolatry (for it is a form of idolatry to
depend on man), so
that we might learn to lean wholly upon Him alone. And so when God
orders your circumstances in such a way that you are disappointed on
every side, that shouldn't discourage you. It is just God weaning you
away from the arm of flesh so that you might learn to live by faith in
Him. Learn to find your security in the fact that God loves you as He
loved Jesus. All competition and jealousy among Christians arises out of
this same insecurity. A man who is secure in the love of God and who
believes that God made no mistake in making him the way He made him, and
in giving him the gifts and talents He gave him, can never possibly be
jealous of another or compete with another. All problems of
relationships among believers are also basically due to this same
insecurity. Just think how many of your problems will be solved when
your eyes are opened to this one truth - that God loves you exactly as
He loves Jesus.
For more articles by Zac Poonen go to:
www.poonen.org/zac