Jesus Leaves His Sheepfold to Find the One

As I mentioned in my last post,  I have been challenged to consider that God does love me. Besides the fact that He loves everyone, the whole world full of people, past, present and future, and He has loved Israel with a love of a father, a Heavenly Father - still He loves me just for me. I really have a difficult time phathoming that. But in Breaking Free, a study by Beth Moore, she says that if we don't believe that God loves us individually, we are not believing His word, not believing what He said many times through many different people in the Bible. And that is actually the sin of unbelief. ~gulp~

I have been working on getting that deep into my being and have begun keeping a list of Bible verses that tell me that very thing.

But in this journey I have come to realize that I have lived most of my adult life operating under the [silent] assumption that if I do enough for the Lord, then He will love me. And, of course, I've never done enough. Yes, yes, I know, God's love, along with His salvation, is not earned. I've taught that many times and know the verses that say that. My head knew it.

But somewhere deeper than my head I have been working to try and earn His love and favor. And as long as I was in the same church (for over 28 years), I didn't have to confront that misconception that motivated so much of what I did. I mean, there was always someting that needed doing. Always. And afterall, faith without works is dead. Right?

And then there came a time of leaving that which was comfortable, a splitting, tearing away from the old church family and going to a new church. It was a decision lead by God. No question.

This new church has a solid core of people who have been together for many years. Trying to break in to circles and trying to find an avenue to serve has been frustrating. During the adventure of "Breaking Free" I have finally figured out that my frustration is not over any people or any social situation. The frustration is because of ME! I have lost the familiar avenue of service, lost the familiar with which to earn God's love. There, I said it. (and not without embarrassment)

As a result of losing familiar areas of service, I've been feeling useless and unloved. Unloved by the only One whose love ultimately matters.

So, here I am, at a place where I have nothing to DO, nothing to BE for Him, except just to be what I am, broken, lonely, unloveable, and knowing deep down that He has me in this place for a purpose.

That purpose, I believe is to cause me to begin to be confident in His love for me and to let HIM fill those empty places in my life. I was too busy before to notice the empty places. I had relied too long on my efforts to please Him. My efforts. My puny, frail efforts.

No more, I am climbing up on my Father's lap, throwing my arms around His neck and burying my head on his chest. Resting in the knowledge that there is nothing I can do to make Him love me any more. Or any less.

I am believing that Jesus left the 99 sheep in His care and went for the lost one - that one was also from His sheepfold. And I am the lost one. I'm of His sheepfold and He will come for me in my confusion.

Amen

 

God is Not a Man

I have long known that I struggle with believing, really believing that God love ME. Oh, I know,  ♪Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.♫  And I can easily tell others that God love them. And I can corporately include myself when I say He loves everybody. My head gets all that. And my mind can repeat all of that by rote.

But my spirit has a harder time grasping the reality of God looking down on my tiny little piece of the world and that He, the awesomely wonderful creator of the entire universe, can pick out just me and love just me. Perhaps you struggle with that concept, too. We can look to our childhoods and blame our fathers or mothers for not doing this or that - or for doing this thing or that. But there comes a time in every person’s life when we have to look to ourselves and figure how to see things in light of Scripture.

My struggle with believing that I am loved individually by God is not even about all my innumerable flaws and sins. I believe with all my being that Christ died for all sins of all mankind and that every single individual human being can come under the blood of Jesus by simply trusting Him to wash them clean and by letting that choice affect the everyday choices of life. And from the depths of my soul, I am so grateful for God’s plan of eternal salvation. And grateful for how that plan works out in living here on earth. He is the only great and merciful God.

But it seems like I am a face in the crowd of those who trust in Jesus. The Bible tells me that all things work together for good to those who love God. (Romans 8:28) I believe that to my core. But He does that for everyone who loves Him, right?

As I've mentioned before, I’m nearing the end of Breaking Free by Beth Moore, and in the homework, she has helped me see the possible cause for my struggle with this concept. Numbers 23:19 clearly tells us, that “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill.” NIV

I think even though I have tried hard not to “put God in a box” and have warned others not to do the same, I have mostly seen God through my human eyes and somehow think that just as in human love, especially by that of friends, God's love ebbs and flows. Human love can be affected by distance as people move, time between visits, misunderstandings, severe disagreements in beliefs, PMS, so many variables in human love. But God is NOT human. And, I guess that as a human, I don’t even know how that would look. But I have to believe that His love for me is not the same as friends that have come and gone. Or my indifference to those ebbs and flows. God is not man and He fulfills His promises.

He promises that His love is unfailing. In fact, in John 17:23 Jesus said that God the Father loves us as much as He loves The Son. And He surely includes all of believers in that because just 3 verses before that, and in the same line of thought, Jesus said, "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,that all of them may be one..."  And in John 10:16, He talks about having other folds of sheep that will be brought in – that is the Gentiles. So I guess it’s true – God loves His people as much as He loves Jesus. Wow! Let that sink in.

Beth Moore encourages her students to do a word search for “unfailing love" in the Bible. If you do that, it is clear that God’s love is unfailing – unlike human love. I have been trying to repeat daily, God has unfailing love for ME. I believe it, Lord, help my unbelief.”

“…The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."  

Zephaniah 3:17 NIV