In recent blog posts, I have told you about a young woman whom I met at a nearby bookstore. She had a baby in a stroller and a mobile office. She was managing her “Mary Kay” business from the bookstore coffee shop.
Finding out I was a pastor, she announced: “I do not believe in God.”
Inquiring further about how she defined God, I told her that I agreed with her. I did not believe in the God she rejected, either. Like her, I do not see God as some celestial judge, ready to strike down sinners with a heavenly bolt of lightning. Nor do I understand God merely as some universal spirit or some FORCE floating around somewhere with whom we must “get in harmony” in order to goodness to flow in our direction.
“So, what do you believe about God?” she asked.
I offered her three simple statements and a business card with this blog’s URL, in case she might want to explore more.
The three statements have been the topic of a series of blogs. The first two are linked below.
First, I told her that God is both eternally and extravagantly loving. Next I told her that Jesus reveal God to be a Papa whose primary aims was always to adopt everyone of us into his family. Today I’d like to comment briefly on the third statement I offered her that God was a loving Papa who invites us to enter into a joyful and intimate relationship.
Jesus referred to God in his teaching and prayers as Abba, a Hebrew term of intimate loved between a child and parent. It would be like a child speaking to her mommy or daddy.
Jesus was not praying with the formal term “Father.” He was praying to his Papa, whom he knew intimately.
This Papa, Jesus taught, offered himself for such intimacy with all people.
That’s what Jesus came in human flesh to reveal!
It’s what makes GRACE so amazing.
Let’s put it all together: God is an eternally and extravagantly loving Father whose desire is to adopt us ALL into his family. Through Jesus, God fulfilled this plan and we are now able and invited to a intimate relationship with God. Through Jesus, God reveals his love for every human being who has ever lived.
You are liked, loved, accepted, included, and adopted -brought home IN CHRIST.
On one occasion Jesus taught that not even a sparrow falls without Papa taking note. THEN He said: YOU are infinitely more valuable than a sparrow!
YOU are a unique, unrepeatable and wonderful miracle of Papa…and you are LOVED
Papa-GOD has initiated a love relationship WITH YOU His hand is outstretched in the life of the Son – and God invited you to take that hand.
Psychologists teach us that the human mind cannot hold two inconsistent ideas. It can’t hold and affirm to opposing ideas, beliefs, options, or opinions. At least not without it producing a great deal of stress and internal strife. Psychologist call this discomfort “cognitive dissonance.”
Many people are living in the midst of cognitive dissonance. One hand they live with a notion that God is Aloof, Ogre, Disapproving, List-maker, Bookkeeper, Karma, Angry, Mean, Bringing the Hammer Down.
This is the God of much of our religious traditions and upbringing.
The other view, an opposite view, is that God is not like religion has often present Him. Rather, God is exactly how Jesus revealed God to be.
Jesus revelation, as we said earlier, is…
God is an eternally and extravagantly loving Father whose desire is to adopt us ALL into his family. Through Jesus, God fulfilled this plan and we are now able and invited to a intimate relationship with God. Through Jesus, God reveals his love for every human being who has ever lived.
Which view of God do you hold? It can’t be both. You’ll have to cast one view of God aside in order to hold up the other.
Which picture will you cast aide?
The God of our religious traditions OR the God revealed in Jesus?
A Divine Invitation
by: Steve McVey
published: 2013-02-18
ASIN: B00BHOXANM
sales rank: 170853
From best-selling author Steve McVey (Grace Walk) comes the book that will bring tears of joy to your eyes. Joy caused by realizing how much God loves you just as you are. This book does more than just teach you. It will touch you in the places of your heart that need healing and joy.
A Divine Invitation will enlarge your heart and increase your comprehension of God’s love that goes beyond knowledge. — Neil T. Anderson, Author of The Bondage Breaker
Whenever I hear [McVey] has a new book, I buy several copies. You’ll feel that same way about Divine Invitation. — Gary Smalley, Author of The Language of Love
… a wonderful, indelible picture of just how beautiful, complete and even startling God’s love for us really is. — the late, Bill Bright, Founder & Chairman, Campus Crusade For Christ
