Mistaken Identity

I grew up in church, thinking God was an angry old man with a long white beard and an even longer stick, just waiting for me to make a mistake so He could give me a whack. I don’t know where I came up with this belief; I don’t remember anyone saying such a thing to me.

I tried to be perfect, dotting every i and crossing every t. No matter how well I may have been doing, it was never good enough; my focus was on how I fell short. In my mind, my worth was based entirely on my performance.

If someone had asked me if I thought God loved me I would have found it to be a silly question and would have positively replied, “of course.” After all, I faithfully attended children’s church and sang “Jesus Loves Me” hundreds of times. Jesus 3:16 was the first Bible verse I memorized. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

But if someone had asked me if God liked me, I wouldn’t have known how to respond. After all, I knew my long list of failures and bad habits. I didn’t like myself very much, so surely God found me annoying, as well.

Sadly, this type of thinking stayed with me into adulthood, until I began hearing more about Who God is and how He feels about me. Some of the Scriptures I’ve read all of my life, yet somehow ignored, began jumping off of the pages. I began to see God not only loved me, but He really did like me and has spent thousands of years proving it.

“This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.”

1 John 4:10 (MSG)

All of my life I had been focusing on my love for God instead of seeing His love for me.

God is not an angry old man with a big stick. He is a God Who loves us so much, He sent Jesus to make the way we could be family.