If you asked her whether God loves her, she would say yes without hesitating, and she would mean it.
If you asked her whether God likes her, something would happen to her face.
She has thought about this properly, which is what makes it hard to shift. She has a theology of it. God's love is His nature and His commitment and it does not fluctuate, and she is entirely persuaded of that, and she can say so to somebody else in a crisis and be a genuine help to them.
But the picture she carries of herself in front of Him is of somebody being borne with. Patiently. Kindly. Without complaint. The way you bear with a person who is doing their best and is nevertheless a good deal of work.
Nobody taught her that in a sentence. It is not from a sermon. It is the shape her own mind has settled into over thirty years of being a person she finds tiring.
If you can believe God is patient with you and not that He is glad about you, come and sit down. Nothing about your theology is being corrected here.
Where that picture came from
Let us describe it accurately, because it is not a doctrinal error and treating it as one will not touch it.
A person who finds herself tiring will assume that everybody else does too, including God, and she will grant Him a better character than the rest of them without ever changing the underlying picture. He is more patient. He complains less. He does not sigh. He is still, in the picture, putting up with something.
So the theology stays orthodox and the picture stays untouched, and the picture is what she lives in.
You are not being borne with. Nothing about how tiring you find yourself is how the Father experiences you, and no amount of self assessment has ever set His disposition. I am not saying it to be kind. The written word says he hath made us accepted in the beloved (Ephesians 1:6), where the acceptance is located in Christ and not in a person's own estimate of themselves, and the Holy Spirit brings it to bear in a kitchen with the door open.
The word He uses for how He came
Here is what changed this for me, and it is not an instruction to feel delighted in.
There is a sentence in Jeremiah where God says how He has come toward His people, and the manner is the whole point of it.
Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.Jeremiah 31:3
With lovingkindness have I drawn thee. Not tolerated. Not endured. Drawn, and the manner named, and the manner is warmth.
Everlasting in that verse is doing something specific too. It reaches backward as well as forward, which means there was no period during which He was making up His mind, and nothing about a person arrived and had to be accommodated.
You have been drawn rather than put up with, and the Word names the manner of it on purpose. That is written down as God's own account of how He came toward somebody, and it is the Holy Spirit who lands it in a woman who has thought carefully and reached the wrong picture.
The delight is not a feeling you must produce
Something has to be said now, because by Thursday this becomes a project: try to feel delighted in, and check whether it is working.
That is a new performance and it will exhaust you within a fortnight. His delight is not a mood you are asked to detect, and the ability to feel it is not the evidence of it.
You have His delight as a fact stated in words, and it stands whether or not it is ever felt. Scripture says the LORD taketh pleasure in his people (Psalm 149:4), which is a report on His disposition rather than an invitation to introspect, and the Holy Spirit is the one that has held that steady through thirty years of a woman's private arithmetic about herself.
And if this has cost more than anybody around this table knows, if sleep has gone, if the evenings have started to frighten, please talk to somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if there is danger to anybody tonight. That is not a detour around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.
So here is the turn, and it is not a feeling you are meant to arrive at.
The Father said it over His Son and you are in His Son. What was spoken from that opened sky covers you, and you are not auditioning for it. The written word says as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God (John 1:12), which makes it a standing rather than a tolerance extended, and the Holy Spirit is the one making that true about you specifically rather than about people in general.
I cannot tell you when the picture changes, or whether it does this year. Nobody honest can. What I can tell you is that the picture was built out of what you think of yourself and never out of anything He said, and that His own account of how He came uses the word lovingkindness.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice. What gives these words their weight is that you are in Christ, and it was never issued on the strength of what you think of yourself. The ground under it is Scripture and the life in it is the Holy Spirit rather than merely correct, and what God does next, and when, is His, and the outcome is His, and nothing on this page claims to know it.
- Idea that God puts up with me, you are a picture I built and you are not the way the Father speaks about me. Jeremiah 31 has Him saying that with lovingkindness have I drawn thee, naming the manner on purpose, and the Holy Spirit never once used the word endured. In the name of Jesus I take you out of the picture.
- Habit of granting God a better character and the same opinion, you are not what God says about me, and you are not sitting in this kitchen tomorrow. Psalm 149 says the Lord takes pleasure in His people, a report on His disposition and not an invitation to introspect, and His Spirit has held that through thirty years of my own arithmetic. I am reading the words out loud today instead of checking how I feel.
- Father, You have loved me with an everlasting love, and everlasting in Jeremiah 31 reaches backward as well as forward. I thank You that Your Spirit made the acceptance sit in the Beloved rather than in my own estimate of myself. Here are Your words at the water, out loud, and here is my name after them.
Jeremiah 31:3
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
