How personal and concerned is God about assuring that we understand how much we are loved?
God used close parking spaces during a holiday season years ago to show me that HE was in charge. I had a prime spot from before Thanksgiving until after my birthday in February every time I went anywhere. Then it stopped as suddenly as it started! It was clear to me that only God could have orchestrated such a lengthy run of parking place preferential treatments! It didn’t occur to me that he might be testing my selfishness at the time! It seemed we were engaged in an ongoing demonstration of “how much do You love me, let me count the ways?” And he was making a point that even the tiniest, most mundane circumstances, concerns, and time demands of my life are not beyond his notice and concern. Then when it stopped I knew I’d learned what God had intended me to learn and had equipped me for something that was to come……. I could not have survived the test that would come later, much less pass well enough (thanks to his boundless mercy and redemptive grace) to be used in other tasks for God, had I not had that special three months of him getting my attention by such a subtle, extraordinary and totally inexplicable experience. I learned to trust that God is present, good, sovereign and loves me personally NO MATTER WHAT and I was able to thrust my hand into his with full trust that he would never let me go! That made times when he felt absent due to moments of temptation considered or indulged unbearable due to the possibility of his fellowship being withheld (even when his love was steadfast!) and would lead me IMMEDIATELY to repentance and restored relationship. This kind of accountable fellowship on God’s holy terms combined with the intimate and unconditional nature of his love makes my relationship with God the single highest priority relationship in my life. Every other one has to find its place beneath that one!
…..And THAT, it seems, is why Christ cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me??” Not because God had abandoned him or removed his love from Jesus Christ, but because for that split second, as he surrendered his human self – spirit. soul, and body- to physical death, it having always been in perfect union with the Holy Spirit, the body was left for that moment to feel the absence of the eternalness of the soul and spirit-Spirit union. The fellowship of God with man was broken in that split second. And THAT feeling, the loss of intimately knowing and communing with the Holy Spirit within one’s own human spirit, is something that the psalmist David and all of us have surely felt at times in the body. Jesus Christ was so human that he chose to feel EVEN THAT brief time out of fellowship with the Triune Godhead of which he was a part, but NEVER was he abandoned by God’s love. THAT, we are told, being permanently out of fellowship with God due our choice to reject God, is HELL. I never want to dwell there but desire to remain in permanent, consistent, confident, intimate fellowship within the holy limits required by The Holy and Almighty God while in the body and when wrenched from this physical body to experience the permanent heavenly existence! This is why the Incarnation of God in Man through Jesus Christ- a one and only event given to us at Christmas 2000+ years ago is so special. He came to show us the depth and steadfastness of God’s love AND the demands of his righteous justice, while taking upon himself the price of that justice upon his own body. I am without words to express my gratitude and love for so much love expressed to me by Jesus Christ, my Lord and God!