1.1 – “God Loves Us” — There is a time and place..

It has been a while since I posted the “Things Christians Shouldn’t Talk About” series intro. I have been debating weather or not I actually have time to devote to something that could  be discussed for such a long period of time. I have decided that I will make time. Not all of the sections will be lengthy or too terribly in depth, but I hope that they all get a meaningful point across none the less.

“God Loves Us”

How many times have you heard that phrase written above? Outside of church, probably quite a bit if you have grown up in a household surrounded by and founded on the principles of Christianity. Inside of the church, you have probably heard it thousands upon thousands of times over and over again.

This happens to drive me absolutely insane.

I hate it when a sermon, a blog, or even a facebook post simply talks about how much God loves us. I think that when mentioning or trying to explain how much God loves us, we need to be cautious of the audience that we are directing the message. There are people [especially kids/young adults] that have never felt an “unconditional love” from anyone. Broken family, no family, abusive family, whatever the circumstance, there ARE people out there that do not know what an unconditional love is. For a pastor or Christian to speak or write about how much God loves us for the intent of anything but solidifying a common belief among Christians is completely pointless.

If your goal is to stay within your “box” and stay on the straight and narrow while listening to sermons every Sunday and attending your weekly Bibly study, then this post will not pertain to you at all. We all know that “those Christians” keep the controversy to a minimum and think that what they do is at its peak and couldn’t possibly be improved upon.

If your goal is to reach the unreached, do hard things, or make sacrifices for what you believe others should see in you…in your faith… in your relationship with God…then you may be one to open your mind and hear what is being said.

Let me put it this way: You read a great book and a year or two later the movie is made. You think some parts of it were incredibly spot on with what you had imagined. Some parts were somewhat like you had pictured. You will always meet someone else that says “That movie was nothing like I had imagined or thought it would be. It was not what I had pictured at all.” Everyone invisions things in a completely different way. Everyone imagines something that they have never seen before in a way so different than any other individual. Why would God’s love be any different?

Recognize that if you want to lead, if you want to bring people to know the joy that you know, than you better be ready for some explaining. Some logic. Some answers. If someone has never in their life experienced an unconditional love, or any form of love at that, it would be extremely unlikely for them to hear your “God loves us” spill and say “You know what, even though I have never felt love before, and have never had someone care about me unconditionally, I think  I will go ahead and start right now.” More times than not, it doesn’t happen that way. We need to have our actions match what claims are made. We need to SHOW people what love is. We need to stop assuming that every “profound” God loves us speech is going to convert people to devoted Christians overnight.

We need to start SHOWING those actions through our everyday lives. We need to let people see the light through our own spirits. Open a Bible. Give some scripture. It can’t hurt. But when faced with the decision to preach about how much “God loves us”, know that people see what you do a lot quicker than what they hear you say. Consider your audience, your demographic, and save your breath if you talk about these things just to hear yourself talk. Or just to feel like a “better Christian”. Make it mean something not only for you, but make it mean something to someone else.

~ by hstringer on August 24, 2009.