Thayer Thursday – God actually LIKES me!
Chris Thayer is the Director of Discipleship at Good Shepherd Church in Charlotte, NC where he oversees adult life groups and Biblical education. On Thursdays I share his weekly “Thayer’s Thoughts” for small group leaders, which are based on the previous Sunday’s sermon. Click HERE to watch or listen to the accompanying sermon.
Every once in a while, a passage of scripture catches you by surprise. No matter how many times you may have read it, certain sections of the Bible will continue to shock you and expose paradigms you didn’t realize you had. This is great because it brings us closer to understanding our God and His heart.
Each of us, for various reasons, have some sort of picture of what God is like. As we continue to grow in our living relationship with Him and read scripture, this image is shaped and refined. Romans 8:31 is a passage of scripture that molds my view of God.
While I was in college, I had a tremendous sense of my own brokenness before God. I knew God was perfect and I was not. Cognitively I believed that I was saved by God’s grace and the whole reason Jesus came to die for me was because I couldn’t make it on my own. However, despite this, I still felt an extreme level of guilt. I believed I had to somehow earn God’s approval—that I had to pray, read the Bible, and fast more than I did.
As I look back on that time in my life I realize I believed God died for me, but didn’t really want me.
In my distorted view I thought God loved me out of some sort of cosmic responsibility, but wouldn’t actually like me until I proved it to Him.
Eventually, as my relationship with Him and other Christians grew, I realized this wasn’t true. My relationship with Him has been appropriately reformed over the years to a less distorted view of Him. While it has been a while since I thought of God this way, studying this week’s passage of scripture has brought into laser focus how wrong I was.
As I read Romans 8 this week and came back again and again to where Paul says: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”, I found myself in awe of the reality of God’s disposition toward us. God is “for” us. He could have left us in our brokenness and shame, but instead He chose to die on the cross, raise from the grave, and defeat death. For whatever reason, I didn’t understand this in college. I never fully grasped the reality that God actually wanted me.
No matter how hard I try to put it into words on a page, every description of that reality seems to fall drastically short. These ten words completely turn my previous understanding of God upside down. Far from needing to get God to like me by what I do, what I do is now an expression of gratitude birthed out of the reality that God likes me. He is for me and my only response can be praise.
He is for you too. Let that comfort you, challenge you, and shape your view of who God is.
Chris Thayer
Categories: Biblical Theology, New Testament, Thayer Thursday