Christianity Is All About Love
Emotional Healing Handbook | 佚名 UnknownShould Be Easy To Hear from the One Who Loves US
It’s quite amazing how much God loves us. Eph 1:4 tells us that “4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.” Imagine that! Before you and I were born, God loved us. Just like when our babies were in the womb, we already loved them. I remember those days. Knowing that we will have a baby, we would prepare a room for him. In America, when we find out that the baby will be a boy, we would paint his room blue. If it’s a girl, we paint it pink. Then we would purchase a mobile with the moon, sun, and stars and hang it over the crib. Turning on the music box, the mobile with the sun, moon, and stars would go round and round.
God loves us so much that before you and I were born, He created the sky blue, and made both the sunrise and sunset pink. He created the sun, moon, and stars and made them go round and round for you and me.
I remember the first time I met my wife at a Hong Kong subway station. It was almost love at first sight. I tell people that good things can happen at a subway station. But I had to return to the US. We started communicating by emails. How precious those emails were to me. I remember getting up in the morning and first thing was to turn on my computer and read those emails. At night, last thing before I went to sleep was to read her emails. However, what was even better was when I was able to talk to her on the phone.
Back in 1997, there were no cell phones with free international calling. So if I wanted to talk to her, I would have to pay to make long distance calls. For that first month, my long distance phone bill was $1000 US dollars.
The reason I shared the above story is because in any loving relationship, it’s our greatest desire to talk and communicate with the ones whom we love. It’s no different with God. When He created Adam and Eve, He constantly was in dialogue with them. Even after Adam and Eve sinned, God was looking for them in the coolness of the day. It’s not too hard for us to understand that when we love someone, we want to spend time with them, to talk with and to listen to them. It’s no different with God. Because He loved us so much, He wants so much to talk with and listen to us. Thus it should not be difficult at all for us to be able to converse with God on a daily basis.
What Keeps Us From Hearing From God
If it should be easy for us to hear from God, why is it so difficult for so many Christians to actually hear from God? The Bible tells us that there are two things that keep us from hearing from God & walking in His Presence. They are:
1) Sin
In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve ate the fruit they went into hiding and struggled to hear from God. God kept calling out to them, but they had hidden and could not hear. In 1Samuel 3, Samuel did not recognize the voice of God and the book of 1Samuel tells us that the voice of God was rare because of Israel’s sins.
2) Anger & Hurt
Ephesian 4:26-27,31 tells us that when we let the sun go down in our anger, we give the devil a foothold. This foothold not only gives the devil’s a voice in our lives but also keeps us from hearing from God. That’s the reason when we are very angry, we have such vengeful or hateful thoughts. If we deal with these two areas in our lives, then each and every person will be able to hear from God, because God created us for relationship. He wants to speak to us more than we want to speak to Him.
There Is, However, An Issue of Order
As Christians, we have been taught that when we reach out to non-believers, the first thing that we need to do is to help them confess their sins and come to Jesus. But which group in the Bible likes to focus on people’s sin first? The Pharisees. “Jesus, don’t you know how great of a sinner that lady who’s washing your feet is?” “Jesus, this lady was caught in the act of adultery. She’s a sinner. We need to stone her.” “Disciples! Why is your teacher always hanging out with sinners?
Jesus, on the other hand, set people free first. He loved and accepted them, then He said, “Go and sin no more.” In the same way, when He saw Zacchaeus on the tree, he accepted him and told him that He wants to be in his house. Zacchaeus was set freed from all those emotional hurts, and then freely confessed his past sins and decided to make restitution, even paying double what he had stolen.
As we clearly see in the Bible, Jesus deals with sins, but that was never His initial focus when it comes to dealing with people. He loved them, He set them free, He accepted them, then He challenged them to sin no more.
In Luke 4:18, Jesus declared His purpose was to set captives free, to give sight to the blind, then to preach the year of the Lord’s favor. In Luke 9 and 10, He taught his disciples to heal the sick, cast out demons, then to preach the Kingdom. This was how He lived His life for us. He loved us, healed us, then ushered in His Kingdom.
This was what He taught His disciples, and this is how we should imitate Him as well. The Lord wants us to release the priesthood of every believer to advance the kingdom of God.