Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” —Lamentations 3:22-24
Someone once told me that my main theme of my preaching could be summed up in one word—vindication. I didn’t know what to think of that, but I think it could be summed up in the words “letting God do it.” Then I realized something: I wished it could be said that my preaching was summed up in this phrase: “letting God love us.”
There is a connection between the principle of vindication and the principle of letting God love us. “Vindication” means to have your name cleared. God alone wants to do that. The moment you and I start to clear our own names, God backs off and says, “OK! Now you do it!” Immediately we are in trouble, and we see the absurdity of trying to do it ourselves. So unless we let God do it, it won’t really happen in the right way.
The same is true when it comes to this principle of letting God love us. In much the same way, we don’t let God love us. Instead, we compete with Him by trying to perform for Him so that we feel worthy of that love. This message is intended for those who feel that God doesn’t love them because they haven’t matched His standards and feel, therefore, they don’t have His approval.
You see, there is so much wrong with all of us, and if we knew just how much, we wouldn’t hold our heads high. How is it that we manage to get through the day? How do we manage to come to the Lord’s Table when we are all so unworthy? It’s because Jesus shed His blood on the cross, and that means infinitely more to God than our getting it right. At the end of the day, despite all our obedience and our efforts to please God, nothing matches the blood that Jesus shed on the cross. Any one of us can hold our heads high in the presence of God, not because in ourselves we have come up to standard, but because of what God has done for us.
You see, that is what makes God, God. He’s different. It’s a wonderful thing when we come to the place where we just let God love us without our having to perform.
Excerpted from All’s Well That Ends Well (Authentic Media, 2005).
