What keeps us from God? Why is He distant?
We think He is distant. We do. He doesn’t. He waits – and longs for us to come.
God knows He is not distant from us. He waits for us to turn to Him. What a joy to be fully known by Him, and to be fully received.
When we know that we have done wrong, we want to hide it from Him. To do that, we shut down. We don’t talk to Him. We don’t want to spend time with Him. We feel judged by comments and thoughts. We are actually judging ourselves, but we take things in the wrong way because we think He is ready to pounce on us – which makes us retreat even more.
But if we are willing to tell Him all of our stuff – even our bad, not-so-complimentary stuff; He is “faithful and just to forgive us,” (I John 1:9). That’s what He has been waiting for – our confession – not so He can punish or shame or reject us. But because our confession clears the air between us. He knew already. But now we know that He knows. And in that knowledge, we can fully accept His love. And we realize that He truly does love us, even in spite of our “stuff.” He doesn’t care that we have that “stuff.” He knows He can clean us up just by making His Presence available to us.
He is faithful to forgive. It never fails. We confess; He forgives.
He is just to forgive. Since Jesus already paid the price of our sin, it would not be justice to expect us to pay it again. While justice used to work against us; it now works in our favor, thanks to the blood of Jesus Christ. (Thanks, Graham Cooke, for teaching me this concept.)
How good God is! How loving! What a joy to be fully known by Him and fully received!
In the meantime, He waits, longing to have relationship with us, longing to show how much He loves us, longing to just enjoy being with us and talking with (not “to”) us. He just wants to hang out with us.
Light Reflections 