Yes, I’m writing to the scared, overwhelmed and brokenhearted. The message from GOD to each of us is the same with some different emphases.
I love you and I am good.
This is true whether we see it in our circumstances or not. Certainly, when we get the job we wanted, or the raise, or the child we prayed for, we know GOD loves us and He is good. The times we waiver are when we lose the job, a family member gets cancer, we lose a loved one or the prayed for pregnancy is lost in miscarriage.
Then, we can’t see that GOD either loves us or is good. I’ve been to many of those places in my 70+ years. I know the disappointment and let down I felt. Often, it was crushing. Reading authors like Joni Earickson Tada (who has now been a quadriplegic for nearly 50 years!) or Elisabeth Elliot Gren (who was widowed twice and is now with Jesus) helped me so much.
For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.Psalm 100:5 ESV
I often liken our perspective to the child who is 2 and wants to play in traffic. When the parent removes them from that place that looks so fun and delightful, they can’t see how the parent could either love them or be good. But as parents, we know we are both. Why? Because of our perspective. We know the danger the traffic is to the life of our child. We love them and want them to be safe so they can grow up to be adults.
The same goes for GOD and us. His perspective is totally different, and grander than ours. There are many actions that He allows into our lives that don’t look loving and good to us. But if we saw them from GOD’s perspective, we would understand why and what was happening. Sometimes that happens during our lifetime. It won’t happen fully until eternity.
If we belong to Christ, we have a new nature and are complete in Christ.
As humans, we are still broken, even though we belong to Christ. But as those who are in Christ, we have a new nature and are complete in Christ. That doesn’t mean we are perfect. We still sin and fail. But we are able to live in freedom, in Christ. Not because we always feel that freedom, but because the fact is, we are free! We often have to take that fact by faith. There are many times we don’t feel it at all.
We also have been given a heart of flesh when we became His child. As such, we are able to obey His laws where before, we weren’t able to obey. Now we belong to Him. We are His people. He has given us a heart that is able to be tender now. Before, it was hard. It was unable to be tender toward GOD and toward others.
And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them.
I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh
and give them a heart of flesh,
that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them.
And they shall be my people,
and I will be their God.Ezekiel 11:19-20 ESV
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus
from the law of sin and death.
For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.
By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,
he condemned sin in the flesh,
in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us,
who walk not according to the flesh
but according to the Spirit.Romans 8:1-4 ESV
We are new creatures in Christ. We are no longer under condemnation because Christ paid for our sins. Now we are free to live our life before GOD because we are safe and secure in our standing in Him. He is the One who loves us and is good.
As those who either because of temperament or circumstance, are prone to feel scared, overwhelmed or are going through a period of broken heartedness, we often need to believe GOD when He tells us this about our hearts. We don’t feel it. But we can believe that we are new creatures in Christ. We have new hearts that have been placed there by GOD. There are often times when we need to believe what He says even when we don’t feel it.
