God Says It With A Smile

Is your God demanding or delightful?  Involved or indifferent?  When you sense His countenance is it stern or smiling?  If someone told you that His hand is moving toward you, would your instincts tell you that His hand would be nudging you back into line or graciously moving things out of your way so that you would make progress?

These are some things that help us to know what we think of our Father.  We need to learn if our default view of God is the rigid disciplinarian or the Father who favors.

It is likely that when we arrive in glory we will be astounded at the instant awareness of the magnanimity of our God.  Noah Webster defines this seldom used word as “greatness of mind; that elevation or dignity of soul…which raises the possessor above revenge, and makes him delight in acts of benevolence, which makes him disdain injustice and meanness, and prompts him to sacrifice personal ease, interest and safety for the accomplishment of useful and noble objects.” Have you allowed yourself to believe that, in powerful grace, God has chosen to eternally delight in you?  I have learned over the years that the quality of my daily life is hinged to how I believe that God perceives me.  There have been seasons wherein, driven by guilt, I have feverishly sought to do as much good as possible in order to appease my God.  Those seasons were akin to the island savage seeking to throw the virgin into the volcano to keep the Lava God from erupting on the village below.  How pitiful those days were when I thought I had to work tirelessly to please God; how dishonoring to my Lord who never even hinted that this was the way for me to relate to Him.  It would be good for me to also confess that there have been intermittent times when I simply hoped that God would not notice me because I was weak, fruitless and empty of spiritual vigor.  I had come too far in my journey to try and fake it so, as foolish as it sounds, I sought to avoid God altogether – maybe He wouldn’t notice me if I didn’t ask Him for much.  My reasoning was that, if I had to acknowledge the present echo in my hollow heart, then He would not love me as much.  Of course, interwoven with these occasions of weakness and insecurity before God, there were the many times when I was placing my confidence in what I was doing for Him.  Staying clean, preaching with results, investing long hours, taming the flesh and building up others served as great insulation from what I feared might still be a possibility between me and Him: His disapproval.  I worked hard to prove to God that I was worthy of His very best.  While wasting days with these different kinds of poor thinking, amazingly, I was unable to discern any of these impoverished attitudes while I was living them out.  These sad ways and tired days only became observable by me in hindsight.

The hindsight came when I began to understand that, in Jesus Christ, I have been made as acceptable to God as His own Son is.  So have you, if you have received His salvation.

So I dare you to do something today.  I dare you to believe that, in spite of all that you aren’t, He has chosen to love you to the fullest.  In defiance of guilt-based living, I challenge you to look confidently toward the heavens and declare your highest praise to the enthroned Savior who has made you complete.  Deny your mind its tendency to scan your spiritual resume, looking for something to soothe your worry.  As a matter of fact, don’t bring anything in your hand to this moment of determination.  Lift up empty hands and believe that, in spite of your past transgressions, present weakness, future uncertainties that the God of all the ages has unilaterally declared across the expanding cosmos that you are fully and forever His – and He said it with a smile. He has chosen to love you with an everlasting love that has taken into full consideration your unworthiness, and yet He still has secured you as His beloved.  My friend, I dare you, dare you, dare you to allow your fragile heart to rest in this absolute confidence.  In the end, this is why He alone will receive all the glory.  Heaven’s harmonious anthem from all of the redeemed will declare forever, “He did it!”

Now put that in your cup and drink it full.