How Much Are You Loved?

I suspect that the hardest ongoing battle that I have in my Christian life has to be my acceptance that I’m loved. Deeply, unquestioningly, unchangingly treasured.

In fact, it is probably less of an ongoing battle that I have, and more of an ongoing battle that God has with me. So many times I have received words of knowledge from friends, or words directly from God Himself, He tells me that He wants me to know how much He loves me, and that I don’t have to do stuff to please Him, I just have to be HIS.

But this runs counter to everything I learned as I grew up. My parents were, in the general run of events, good parents. I received my share of hugs, plasters, antiseptic, education, laughter and discipline in moderately balanced quantities. They made their mistakes because they, like everyone else, had their human frailties; but they certainly tended to provide a consistent level of ‘doing their best’.

And the upbringing they gave to me is probably, largely, the upbringing I’ve seen fit to hand on to my son.

I’m doing my best.

Maybe your parenting skills are better honed than mine… but the gist of my childhood (and probably my son’s) was this:

‘ You please us with an achievement of some sort, good behaviour or a good school report (rather infrequent in my case), ’ – feeling of being loved increases.

‘You make us unhappy with the reverse of above’ – feeling of being loved decreases.

It tends to be how we operate in the world. We’re all familiar with it, it seems to work in raising moderately balanced and well behaved children, but I can’t help feeling that it leaves an uncomfortable and unproductive gap.

It also runs so very counter to what out Lord God has for us. His love never runs out, never diminishes, is never withdrawn. When we kneel before Him in prayer, we are accepted, our prayers are heard, just like the prayers of all those heroes throughout history that we are inclined to hold in such awe.

We need to grasp the magnitude of what God offers us in our covenantal relationship: – when we humble ourselves in prayer, we kneel exactly where all the biblical superstars kneel throughout history and forward into the future. We are loved, we are precious, we are accepted…

We are ‘Where the Warriors Kneel’.