Helping people make connections with God…

God is for you

From committed atheists to full-blown Jesus-freaks, very few of us really understand the message Jesus came to bring: that the Kingdom of God has come to Earth. From Day One of His mission, He called this “The Good News” of the Kingdom of God.  Tragically all too often the church has presented not the Good News, but only the Bad News.  In extreme cases, the hugely hopeful message of Jesus has been twisted into one of fear: “Turn or Burn!”

So before we can really get into the meat of Jesus’ teaching and the new life He came to bring, we have to understand this: God really is for us.  You may have seen a leaflet with this message on.  We can look at this simple sentence in four different ways.

At the very outset of His mission on Earth, Jesus set out His stall; His “manifesto” if you like, by indicating the types of people this mysterious Kingdom of God had come to reach.  You can find this in the Bible, in the first few verses of Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 5.  There He lists not the good and the godly: not the brilliant, the wealthy or the confident, sorted-out people.  He speaks of the spiritually empty, the sad and sorrowful, the quiet and unassertive, victims of injustice, those who don’t or can’t stand up for themselves. There are no fewer of those in today’s society than there were then. It is important to note that Jesus spoke these words primarily to His first followers: most of whom were actually quite successful in life. Nevertheless He wanted them to concentrate on reaching the outcasts of society.  He Himself was often criticised by the religious people of His day for spending time with prostitutes, thieves and drunks.  Why? Because whether you are a well-to-do businessman or tradesperson like some of His disciples were, or whether you are a drug addict or a single mother with a load of debt, God is for YOU.

As in Jesus’ own time, many today feel so unworthy of God’s love that we can’t approach Him.  Or maybe we think: “He might love some people, but not me”.  Tragically, Christians can sometimes give the impression that God is a legalistic being, looking for reasons to destroy us.  In John’s Gospel, Chapter 3, Jesus brings a very different message about God.  Talking to one of the religious leaders – people who tried to please God through obeying a long list of “Do’s and Don’ts” – He says

“I have come into the world as God’s representative: not to condemn the world but to save it.  It’s because of God’s love that He sent me, not because he is angry with everyone”.

This is actually quite a complex chapter in which He makes some extremely challenging remarks, but at the centre of it all is not God’s anger: far from it.  At its very core is His love and His longing for people to make connections with Him. God is FOR us not against us.

Many of us look around the world and see nothing but suffering.  (Of course, this isn’t actually true, but it is what the news media regard as news-worthy, so it is what we tend to see, which in itself is depressing.)  Everything around us seems to cry out that the world is filled with injustice, sickness, disasters and starvation.  In fact, it is a mess; but it’s one Jesus came to clear up.  It’s popular to say: “if there was a loving God, none of this would happen”.  This is an argument that has been around ever since the First Century, and St John would have been more than familiar with it.  His answer to it is found in his first letter, Chapter 4:

“God is love. The love of God was displayed among us when God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. This is what love is about: not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to take away all our sins.”

Many of us have good reasons for wondering if it’s true, (and I’d be delighted to discuss them with you over a coffee) but the truth is that God IS for you!

St Paul was the leading preacher of the 1st Century, planting new churches all over the Northern Mediterranean.  For his pains he had been shipwrecked, beaten up, imprisoned, flogged, often gone hungry and lived in constant fear for his life.  He was familiar with more opposition than most of us will ever see in our lifetime.  Yet despite all these experiences he understood the love of God.  A thousand voices in his head must have been telling him God wasn’t on his side, but look what he writes in his letter to the Romans, Chapter 8:

“If God is for us, who can be against us?……Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?…….No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Even when everything seems to conspire against us, God Himself is for us: 100% on our side, and longing to get involved in our lives.

Whoever you are, whatever you have done and whatever you believe, God is for you.  If you’d like to know more, please join us one Sunday, or get in touch via the church office.  What have you got to lose?