{"id":2010,"date":"2017-02-24T09:24:17","date_gmt":"2017-02-24T16:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/?p=2010"},"modified":"2017-02-24T09:25:23","modified_gmt":"2017-02-24T16:25:23","slug":"2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/?p=2010","title":{"rendered":"God is Love? (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

Do you ever feel like there is a disconnect between what we read in the Bible about God and\u00a0what we experience in daily life?<\/span><\/h1>\n

I do. \u00a0Some days it’s hard to believe that God is love. \u00a0When I get word\u00a0that a friend of mine came down with an incurable illness, or when I hear that my kids have been bullied, or when I am\u00a0criticized in ministry (all true realities right now for me), I tend to push back from God rather than embrace him. \u00a0I think the reason that is difficult to square the theology that “God is love” with my reality is because I have to discover God’s love in the context of evil.<\/span><\/p>\n

God told Adam and Eve that death would come if they ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. \u00a0We, like them, think the knowledge of evil is harmless…but it is deadly. \u00a0The Biblical understanding of knowing is more than an intellectual grasping of the concept. \u00a0It has more to do with experiencing evil in your life. \u00a0This personal experience of evil that we all suffer from tends to make us hesitant to accept God’s love for us personally. \u00a0We can kinda fake it at church or in Bible studies, but when we are in the grind of our own personal suffering from evil, it transforms\u00a0the simple theology of “God is love” into an olympic effort to embrace it.<\/p>\n

Yet there are three things\u00a0that help me understand God’s love in the context of my personal suffering from the evil I experience this side of heaven.<\/p>\n

Last week I posted the first part of my encouragement to embrace God’s love for me is in knowing that God Pursues me<\/a>. \u00a0<\/strong>I am encouraged to receive God’s love because the whole Bible reveals a God who pursues me with the sole purpose of experiencing his\u00a0love for me. \u00a0He is\u00a0singularly focused on me entering a relationship with him for my benefit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This week, I want to share the second thing that helps me embrace God’s love: The God of Love suffers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/b><\/span>2. God Suffers:<\/b><\/span> God\u2019s gift of the cross reminds me that God is willing to suffer immeasurably to reveal his passionate love for me. \u00a0I wouldn\u2019t give one of my daughters for anyone. \u00a0I couldn\u2019t do it. \u00a0But God did. \u00a0He is no stranger to suffering. \u00a0He is a God of long suffering for the people he loves. \u00a0The answer to seeing and experiencing God\u2019s love for me in the midst of my\u00a0suffering is not in demanding God prevent my suffering from happening or gaining psychological knowledge about the pathology of human suffering. \u00a0It\u2019s in recognizing that the suffering I undergo because of the evil I experience in the world has been addressed by the suffering of God\u2019s Son on the cross. \u00a0For me, the focus then shifts from, \u201cWhy me?\u201d to \u201cHow can it be?\u201d \u00a0How is it that you loved me like that? \u00a0Seeing God\u2019s suffering helps me to focus on the wonder and mystery of God\u2019s infinite love for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what about you? \u00a0How does being in relationship with a God who suffers for you encourage you to embrace his love?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you ever feel like there is a disconnect between what we read in the Bible about God and\u00a0what we experience in daily life? I do. \u00a0Some days it’s hard to believe that God is love. \u00a0When I get word\u00a0that a friend of mine came down with an incurable illness, or when I hear that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.theawakenministry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/God-is-Love-Pt.-2.001.jpeg?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2010"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2013,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010\/revisions\/2013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theawakenministry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}