God is not surprised by your sin or your insecurity.
Read that again.
Amidst the fear and wonder with which you were made, there’s a deviant and wayward glitch in the mainframe of your soul. You’re prone to wander away from God and doubt His love because of your sin.
And you’re prone to forget the purpose for which you were created because of this wandering. Some remain asleep to it for a lifetime.
There are some things that, barring some memory-impacting illness later in life, we’re never likely to forget. I don’t roll over in the morning and wonder Fi’s name, or where I live, or which shoe should go on which foot.
Yet there are deeper truths we can more easily forget.
God is not angry with you. God has not turned his back on you. His Son will not forsake you. Despite these truths, the dislocating, disintegrating nature of sin makes that lie seem real.
David knows it. It’s why you’ll hear some truths about God again and again in the Psalms. The same truths. Because sin breeds amnesia about God’s eternal character. It fools us that our actions set the relational agenda when it comes to God’s love and our worthiness to receive it.
So, again, David speaks it out: the Lord is gracious and merciful. slow to anger and abounding in love. The Lord is good to all and his mercy is over all that He’s made. His faithful in all his words and kind in all his works. (145: 8,9,13)
God is FOR you. Think about that. Remind yourself of that. And in that moment when you think that this thought, that action, these words, those motives, or your past, have disqualified you or separated you from God’s love, marvel all over again at the Gospel. God’s not surprised and, in Jesus, He’s made a ‘forever way’ that reconciles us with God in a consummate way that can never be severed, diminished, separated or sullied.
Your sin is trumped by Jesus’ righteousness and God’s faithfulness; by His grace and mercy that leads with love…and backs it up with more love. Don’t hang back from the One who says ‘Come, all who are weak and heavy laden and I will give you rest’. He’s good for it and He’s forever up for it.
(Simon Elliott, October 2014)