God Loves You & has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life

Maybe; maybe not.

If one means by this that God loves you just the way you are, and that he is just waiting anxiously for you to come to that realization so he can begin to bless you…you couldn’t be farther from the truth.

However, if you mean something Biblical, like "God is not neglectful of His promise, in the way that some men count neglect, but He is bearing patiently with us, not anxious that anyone should perish but that all men might come to repentance," then you will be hitting closer to the truth.

Now, I realize that’s not what the verse says exactly, but it’s a whole lot closer than "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life."

Where in the Bible does it say that our salvation depends on realizing that God loves us just the way we are? It seems to say the opposite: "…we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind." (2 Eph 2:3). Again, "…you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." (2 Eph 2:12). Or, once more, "On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you once walked, when you lived in them." (Col. 3:6,7).

In other words, when we were apart from Christ, we were under the wrath of God, not His love. And if we think to ourselves that we were never apart from Christ, then we are probably not saved at all, having never experienced what is called repentance.

Today’s preaching, if you can call it that, tries to cozy up to the subject of sin. It stuffs a lie into the skin of the truth to make it look like real linguine, but it is more like lousy linguistics. For instance, it says that sin is "missing the mark" from their study of the Greek. Well, they are definitely off the mark on their Greek. If a word progresses from one meaning to another, these scholars evidently don’t know about it. A study of linguistics, linguine, or something on their part, is badly needed. Sin is not "missing the mark." It is sin. It is transgression of the Law of God. If we don’t know what that law is, or feel that we are loved by God in some personal way apart from any knowledge of the law, then we don’t know about sin. If we don’t know about sin, we don’t know about salvation.

If God loves you, then you will come to know about sin. You will find out what kind of a sinner you really are. You will submit to the teaching on the transgression of the law and it will do you good. If not, then cry out to God for his mercy so He can show you the truth about your condition. The wicked care nothing for the light and will avoid it at any cost, even though they be good little priests doing good deeds in the community and violating children all the while. They are convinced they are loved by God, and so are their dupes. This sort of religious spirit gives Christianity a black eye, or so the devil would like to think. It only really just shows us that the world is full of deluded hypocrites.

If God loves you, then you will come to know that you cannot possibly keep all the demands of the law, and yet He still requires it of you. The only people who know about this are people who have either tried and failed, or people who are so rotten that they know they’re rotten. We’re not talking about children, here. If a child does not know evil, he is the one whom Jesus speaks of when He says, "Of such are the kingdom of God." But I am not talking to children, am I? I am talking to hardened sinners who feel a heartfelt need to justify themselves. Some try to justify themselves by doing exemplary deeds to offset their evil deeds; the moderns just chant to themselves "God loves me no matter what" over and over again.

The Law is like a harsh searchlight that catches us while we are trying to run for cover. There we are, etched against the shadows, grotesque fleeing figures no longer desirous but gargoyles against the shadows, black smudges of recoiling horror. Stripped of our vainglory we now appear as we appear to God, colorless, ugly creatures of darkness not fit for the light. This is no fun. But what was our prayer? Should we not pray that God would reveal to us that which is displeasing to Him so that we might better serve him? We do not want to go backwards, back into the shadows again, but we want the law to do its work and kill us under its light. Then we can be resurrected again into a warm and true love in Christ, a love that appears glorious and brilliant under any light, because the law came by Moses; but the greater light, grace and truth, come through Jesus Christ.

This is the necessity of the cross. Without a wholehearted participation in the cross, there is no salvation. The self-righteous reject such nonsense. This is foolishness to them. They have their love for Jesus and that’s all that’s expected of them, they will tell you. They feel as though they have had or are presently having some religious experience of God’s love and that’s enough. Any more to them is legalism, or fanaticism. These same Christians who go to Casual Chapel will practically excommunicate you if you bring their covetousness to light. There is much talk of the Spirit. But do they know that: no Cross; no Spirit. They long to be seen as spiritual but they as fervently avoid the cross. To them, the cross is for Jesus to bear, and they applaud from the sidelines. They build fancy shrines to the cross, they manufacture temples and basilicas, they drive cars with fishes where triple A decals belong, and they make long prayers, but they have no cross. Their faith is a complicated thing that consists of making reasons to avoid dealing with their covetousness. They speak in tongues, give seminars on how to save the lost, and pay their gardener double on Christmas, but they have no Spirit because they have no cross.

The covetous person feels that God’s wonderful plan for them is to have their world and eat it too. Jesus is sort of a whipping boy who does all the suffering while they admire Him from a safe distance. They are ashamed of their Savior and deaf to their Lord’s commands. If He says to sell all that you have and give it to the poor, they retaliate with Greek, Hebrew and Wall Street infinitives, supposing that gain is godliness. Well, does God love them or not? They live in their wealth and call it meager existence. None of their cars is over 5 years old. They must drive 30,000 miles a year to keep crude oil prices down. They are patriots and saints.

No wonder that God has called the wisdom of this age foolishness. No wonder that He has chosen the foolishness of the message preached to save the elect. The rest trust in uncertain things, like their false assurance of God’s love, or Ford’s latest warranty. The main way to check whether you have false assurance is whether you hate the preaching of the gospel. If you love to hear how God loves you no matter what, then you probably hate what Paul says. He says, "For He will render to every man according to his works; to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality: He will give eternal life. But for those who are self-willed and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness: There will be wrath and fury; there will be tribulation and distress for every person who does evil..." from Romans chapter 2. Yes, the kindness of God leads us to repentance, but we must not for one second think this means that God has become demented and forgotten why he saved us in the first place. We were saved "unto good works" Ephesians 2:10. His love for us can be quite daunting at times, but that is because we are flesh, and He is Spirit.

If you are God’s elect, then he loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. All things will work together for your good. You may not like it, and you may look around at others wondering why they seem to be blessed and you seem to be cursed, but things will still be working to your good. You will still seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, even though it doesn’t net you a new car like your religious neighbors down the street. Maybe you will have trials beset you all around. Maybe you are learning the lesson: Every branch in Me that bears fruit, my heavenly Father purges, prunes, cleans off; so that it may bear more fruit. If not, you will die away, become combustible garden refuse, which is burned in the fire. God does not want this. He wants us to abide in His Son. The suffering that results is proof of the life of Christ that is in us. Because we have him in us, we are hated by the world. Simple. That’s His wonderful plan for our lives. Are we willing to be loved by this God?

Let God love you. It will mean loss for most of us, because we are so used to having way more than we could ever use in ten lifetimes. Does God care if we live in a $500,000 home? I seriously doubt it. Greed stifles God’s love. Greed will take us down. You cannot love money and God. You will come to hate one of them and love the other. If you let God love you, you will love God back. However, if we do not love God, but are just trying to impress him with our imagined good works, then we are accursed. We cannot be righteous before God, nor can we do good works, unless we die in Christ (by being attached to the vine, we are no longer alive to our own ambitions but dead). If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus, let him be accursed, said Paul. There is no wonderful plan for that man’s life, but a certain fearful looking forward to judgment, which God will render in flaming vengeance upon His enemies.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus be upon you, though thus you must be awakened from slumber.

- Chris Simonson

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