Our Father’s Love Isaiah 54:10

Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.  Isaiah 54:10

 

Christ said us, "Love your neighbor as yourself." He said that loving God and loving others is the most important thing. The only ne ostandard we should follow is love.

 

However, you cannot give people what you do not understand or what you do not have. To love people, it is essential to love yourself. It's very difficult for someone who can't love themselves to love others.

However, in order to love yourself, you need to know how much you are loved.

 

It is often said that God's love is "unconditional love." "Unconditional" is really important. This is because some people can only conditionally think themselves "I’m Okay." if they know that God's love is unconditional.

 

This was also the case with me. When I was in a seminary, I experienced burnout. I was exhausted by the tasks and services that did not end even if I stayed up all night. What triggered me was the event I faced as a divine seminarian, but I think that my own way of life was also deeply related to this.

Before that, I was a graduate student, and I stayed in the laboratory until 10 pm when the library closed every day. Driven by the obsession of having to study, I felt guilty when I wasn't doing anything.

 

After that, when I entered the seminary. The amount of work I had to do at the seminary was not comparable to that of the graduate school. I also felt pressure on putting the top performer's name up on a bulletin board in our seminary. So more and more I cut my sleep and devoted myself to tasks, service, and dissertation. During that time, I felt like I was just a cogwheel for a seminary. A lot of other stresses piled up, and when I went to the platform of the station to go to church, the idea that "If you jump in now, you don't have to do anything anymore" came to my mind. I was so tired that I vaguely felt I wanted to die.

The love of my family stopped me to have such a feeling. That's what the Bible says, "Man shall not live by bread alone." Love saves our lives. I think it's really happy to be alive.

 

 

Then, I had to stop everything. However, I was able to restore my relationship with God again. When that happened, I was able to have time to read the Bible purely, not for service or assignments for the first time in a long time. Apart from the prayer meeting framework, I was able to have time to pray to God from the bottom of my heart.

In addition, I realized that what I really needed was not a service, a theological subject, or a dissertation, but a relationship with a living God.

 

I've been running since I was a graduate student, I might have thought "I’m not valued without doing something". I was afraid being in trouble with others, and I could not abandon the required work and tasks even if I became a capacity over. I kept running until God forced me to stop.

 

However, by regaining time with God, I realized that I was wrong. I was taught that it wasn't worth doing something, but that my own existence was meaningful. I was taught that what God wants me to do is not to make efforts, but to be with him. I also learned that what is important is that God loves myself, not the evaluation of others.

 

We sometimes assume that our value is determined by our added value. For example, a background, a job, a look, a role, being needed, being recognized by others. None these are the very existences of ourselves.

 

If you decide your own value by adding value, your existence will be very fragile. When the added value does not work, or when we feel that you have a problem, we doubt the significance of your existence. Then, we can only accept the perfect personality of us.

 

Jesus strongly warned legalism that is doing something good. God does not love us with the added value. We are valuable because of the very existence.

 

If we can't appreciate our existence and don't love ourselves, we may fall into workaholics for fear of stopping. Some Japanese pastors fall into such states. If we don‘t love ourselves, we find it difficult to trust someone because we think we aren’t worth being loved, and we're afraid to open our heart and have an intimate relationship. We may also test the affection of others , and we may overly doubt others and find difficulty to love others. When our heart are full of yourself, it becomes difficult to think and consider other's feelings. True love is giving, not robbing.

If you recognize yourself only by adding value, you may be afraid to deviate from the fixed rail because you care about people's evaluation, or you may see others as an object to compare with yourself, not an object to love. You may become difficult to truly rejoice in the existence of others. You may feel emptiness, and find difficulty to feel reassured and to feel joy.

 

It sounds like a dilemma, but these things are sometimes seen in people who grew up in pastoral homes or in very devout Christian homes. That's just a few examples, and of course many don't. However, sometimes I saw they overly averse to Christianity and aggressive towards others. They afraid to be off the rails that They have decided to "I’ll live like this", or They are overly concerned about how people see them.

 

I was wondering why they become like that, but when I saw a pastor's child who is five years old, was left alone in a large chapel, I thought I saw the reason. The pastor who the child's father, as well as his wife, were busy and left there for the preparation of next worship service scheduled for a big event. The child was crying alone in the large chapel. The child was the youngest of the family and was very loved when he was with his parents, but I saw him often left alone on Sundays. When I found him, he was in a situation where he could have been kidnapped at any time.

 

Sometimes the worship, planning and service in the church may become idols for devout people. But then you've lost sight of what's really important. When parents idolize the framework of the church, they may be ashamed that their child don’t come to church, or may not accept that the attitudes of their child is not good at church, such as divorce, even if he or she feels suffering. Children are hurt because they cannot be sure the love of their parents. Religious values ​​may be imposed on them and they may hate Christianity. Alternatively, sometimes the children of such families may be baptized or be pastors to meet the expectations of others. That is a big mistake. They are deprived of the opportunity to actually meet God without being noticed by anyone. Even if they suffer from the evaluation of others and grow up, they try to continue to play "good boys" with distrust of God and people, and as a result, various distortions occur. Then, a big problem may occur later.

I mentioned this because I felt it is important, but of course it’s not the case of everyone, those who grew up in a pastor's family or a devout Christian's family. I'm sure there are many people in the pastor’s families who don't have such problems.

 

God is love, but if a work for God is prioritized over God, mistakes will occur. The only commandment that God gives to others is to "love." I think God wanted parents of the child  to run up to the crying child in the chapel, rather than devoting himself to the service of the church. If you don't take good care of yourself, it's very difficult to take good care of others. Without the conviction that you are loved, it is very difficult to get genuine peace of mind and happiness.

Whether or not you can love yourself depends on understanding that you are loved. It is deeply related to the belief that parents love you.

God says in the Bible that he is our father. Understanding how much our Father God loves us is the key to our lives.

 

God's love is immeasurable and is in a completely different dimension from the standards of the world.

 

The people loved by the Lord, in the Bible speaks, were never perfect.

Abraham, who believed in God and was regarded as "righteous," feared the king and called his wife a "sister." Moses, who saved the Israelites from Egypt, murdered him when he was young. David, the king of Israel who loved the Lord with all his heart, committed adultery and indirect murder. Peter, a disciple of Christ, betrayed Christ and ran away saying, "I don't know such a person." Paul, who preached Christ widely, once persecuted Christians and helped them to be killed.

 

 

However, they were all deeply loved by the Lord and ultimately used wonderfully for the glory of God. God did not care about their sins. God respected their existence. God did not see them as doing good or bad. God chose them because He loved their existence. Unconditional choice is love.

 

The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.  But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.

Deuteronomy 7: 7-9

 

Parents do not conditionally love their children. They love their child not because They can do something, or added value. A child is an irreplaceable and irreplaceable existence just because he is their child. God sees us that way as a father. For God, we are absolutely irreplaceable.

 

At the beginning of creation, there were two symbolic trees in the Garden of Eden. They were a tree of life and a tree of knowledge of good and evil. When　Adam and Eva chose the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they became spiritually dead and sinned. God loves us regardless of whether we do good or bad. The scribes who try to live by doing good morally, and the corrupt people who live by doing bad things ,both of them are dead in the eyes of God.

God wants us to choose the tree of life that is Christ, and to live with the life of him. When Christ lives in us, we will not be able to yearn for sin. What is important to us is not to do something to be perfect, but to accept our imperfect self, admit our sins, and repent.

 

Weakness is an opportunity for God to work to the fullest. God does not care about our weaknesses at all. The important thing for us is not to be perfect, but to acknowledge your weaknesses. The improtant question for God is whether we are alive or spiritually dead, not whether we are doing good or not. Those who believe in Christ are recognized by God as perfect beings because they wear innocent Christ. Our effort cannot make us perfect.

 

Christ came to pay for our sins. Since God is holy, we cannot have relationships with God in our sinful state. Just as there is punishment for a crime, you have to pay for it. God wanted to love, save, and be involved with us, even if we had sin. However, He didn't want to hurt us because He loved us. Therefore, God tried to pave the way that we didn’t have to pay for our sins.

 

As a result, God sent us the innocent Christ, who is his Son, to the world as a person who pays for the sins of us. When Christ was crucified, he was insulted, betrayed, and hurt by those he was trying to save. But because of his love for us, Christ undertook to be crucified as a redeeming lamb.

Before he was crucified, Christ told his disciples, " Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John15:13)" Christ were willing to throw away his life and loved us enough to do it. He acknowledged the infinite value of our existence and no longer pleaded guilty to us. The Atonement of Christ has made us innocent. He was considered totally innocent.

 

God loves us unconditionally. His love has nothing to do with what we did or didn't do. However, we love our existence. God will never betray us at all times and will remain on our side. Even before the foundation of the world was established, God planned our existence from an unimaginable long time, chose it as a loved one, and sent us out to the world. For God, the world cannot be established if only one of us is missing. We are so valuable. We deserve to be loved by infinite love.

God tells us:

"Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you" Isaiah 43:4