Do you ever wonder how God feels?
Have you ever reflected on the feelings of God? Have you ever been pained by His pain? Has your heart ever longed to bring a smile to His face in contrast to what He must feel so often when He is faced with the disdain of the atheist, the futile worship of His creation by the ignorant pagan, or worse yet, when He contemplates those of His own declared followers, his adopted children, about whom the Holy Spirit anguished in Romans 2:
“God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”
For most of my life (On May 10 I will have been a Christian for 62 years.) I have thought about myself and my challenges and my feelings and my successes and my failures in relationship to God. It’s only in the last few years that I have begun to contemplate the feelings of God in our relationship. At first that may seem to be rather presumptuous, to think one can know how God feels about anything, yet God often shares His feelings with us. It seems to me He wants us to know how He feels. Listen.
The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. (Gen. 6:6)
Therefore this is what the LORD Almighty says:
“See, I will refine and test them,
for what else can I do
because of the sin of my people? (Jer. 9:7)
“A son honors his father and a servant his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the LORD Almighty. (Malachi 1:6)
“Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” declares the Sovereign LORD. “Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?” (Ezek. 18:23)
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Matt. 9:36)
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! (Luke 13:4)
“Father, forgive us for our insensitivity to your pain and grief.”
-JSClose
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