Tag: sinners

Loved, Accepted, & Worthy!

Many times I’ve heard people say they don’t feel worthy of love from someone else, either they don’t feel good enough for certain friends or to be in a relationship with a certain person. I wish that I could help them know that isn’t how God sees them! God sees us as his children, created in his image, his beloved. God shows no favoritism between his children as some parents do. He wants all of us to succeed. There are several verses that tell us that God is no respecter of persons. Romans 2:11-16; Galatians 2:6; Acts 10:34-43; 1 Peter 1:17 are all examples of how God does not choose favorites.

 

I understand when a person has been raised in a family where one or both parents were not loving or were absent, that it’s hard to conceptualize God as a loving Father. But that is just who God is — a loving and compassionate parent. It is in these situations, that we must not compare God to our parents, but see God as the parent that ours should have been, which is kind, compassionate, caring, loyal, trustworthy, nurturing, and always present when we need him. If he weren’t, could he have sent his own son to die on a cross like a criminal so that we could be restored to fellowship with him? Just think of how Adam and Eve had so much ease with God in the garden to speak with him and to fellowship. He wants that for each of us. He wants to take us back to a garden experience.

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Jesus made a new way for us to regain that experience and covenant by making a new covenant through his death, burial, and resurrection. He also gave us a new commandment in John 13:34 to love each other as he loved the church. Jesus became our once and for all sacrifice for sin. Jesus was the perfect lamb who did away with sacrifices with his ultimate sacrifice in death. He did away with the law by replacing it with grace, love, and truth. Jesus loved without measure, he healed those who were thought to be unable to be healed, he loved the untouchables, he loved the outcasts, he dined with sinners, he ate with those others felt unworthy, he spoke to those many thought beneath him. Jesus showed no favoritism in his communication with people. He only grew angry and frustrated with those who led people astray in Biblical teachings or profited from others by kicking out the thieves in the temple. He showed mercy to the man next to him on the cross, telling him that he was forgiven. If all of these people were able to fellowship with Jesus, how can anyone else feel unworthy? There is no calamity, no illness, no sin that separates us from God.

We are adopted into his sheepfold, like a shepherd guards his sheep. He gathers us tenderly and takes care of us, if we are willing to allow him to do so. We are all worthy and it doesn’t matter where we came from, what our past is or was, as long as we put it behind us from this day forward, Jesus’ arms are open. God adopts us, he takes us in, we are his, and we are worthy of anything anyone else is. It doesn’t matter what people have said to us that contradicts that over the years. Whatever contradicts what or who God says we are, is a lie. 

What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us… And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. Romans 8:31-34 &38

So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. Romans 8:15-17

 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. Ephesians 1:4-5 

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his children, too. 1John 5:1

But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. 1 Peter 2:9

But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God. John 1:12-13

Jesus was born of God as a man. We are born of a man and may be reborn as a child of God. We can become joint heirs with Jesus Christ and obtain all that inheritance encompasses. I will share what our inheritance is in a future blog. But for now, be accepted, feel loved, and feel worthy of all that God has for you in this life. You are a precious child of God. 

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Is There a Seat for Jesus?

Recently, I spoke with a friend who, upon moving to a new town, visited the local church she had grown up in. She said all the heads turned when she walked in, and they weren’t just looks of curiosity. As she found a seat, she had a feeling that she was sitting in someone else’s seat. She sat through the service, feeling uncomfortable. She continued to try to visit the church, picking different pews and different spaces within them for several Sundays. Each Sunday, she was met with the same reaction, that she was occupying a seat that belonged to someone else or that she was unwelcome. She even waited one Sunday until the last minute, after the church bells rang, giving everyone a chance to sit in their regular places. She still was met with turned heads and eyes looking down their noses. The minister never payed her a visit and she finally quit going. Why go where you don’t feel accepted or wanted? I’ve thought about our conversation a few times since and it strikes me how their reception is so unlike my friend’s personality. She embodies the same opening arms towards others as Jesus, not judging, but loving people exactly as they are. Others from all walks of life are welcome in her world.

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I wonder what those church people could have had in their minds to be so cold to such a warm and caring person? Were there rumors or gossip they had spread and believed, which are usually lies? Or did they feel they were too good for her? Or were they so cliquish, that they didn’t accept others who hadn’t been in their fold for years? Greater still, would they recognize Jesus if he came through their doors and sat in one of the pews or would he have been met with the same huffs and looks of derision? I can tell you they did encounter Jesus, and they didn’t recognize him, because we carry Jesus with us, when we are believers. (Galatians 2:20 “My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.“) We are the light and perhaps that is what they didn’t like. Her light was dispelling their darkness and their sins of piety and holier-than-thou attitude.

I think of how opposite their attitude was to Jesus’ attitude towards others. The first one that comes to mind is the Samaritan woman. He hadn’t heard rumors about her, he Knew her life story, but that didn’t keep him from talking with her and offering her the living water. 

John 4:7, 9-10, 13-15 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink? The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

He went on to ask her to call her husband and she said she didn’t have one and he told her she was right, she’d had five. But that didn’t stop Jesus from conversing with her or offering her salvation, because he didn’t look at her sins or what people said about her, he looked at her as redeemed. 

Another story that comes to mind is when Jesus ate with Levi, a tax collector and sinners. It was then that the pious teachers of the law had a fit! They couldn’t figure out why Jesus would eat with tax collectors and sinners. But how would he reach them, if he didn’t fellowship with them? They welcomed Jesus at their table and many turned their lives to follow him. 

Mark 2: 15-17 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

So these were people that were not accepted in the community, but what about those who were? What about the leaders, how did they treat Jesus when he dined with them?
Let’s look at one Sabbath at a prominent Pharisee’s house, (maybe a deacon or bishop in today’s standards). 

Luke 14:1-4, 7-11 One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law,“Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way. When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable: “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Jesus didn’t allow the circumstances of those around him to stop him from doing what his father had sent him to do, to heal the sick and save the lost. He also didn’t miss an opportunity to teach them how ill-behaved they were in choosing their seats and jockeying for position. So, to me, my friend was in good company, because her lifestyle was the same as Jesus, going again and again where she wasn’t wanted and continuing to love those who are rejected by society as she had been. I wonder, is there a seat for others in your life? Is there a seat for Jesus?