Crazy Love

"Do you love God or just His stuff?"

That was a question that I read in Crazy Love by Francis Chan. 

So, do you love God, or just His stuff? When you talk to God, how do you speak to Him? How do I speak to Him? Well, it depends on the day. Sometimes I address Him like a spoiled child who thinks life is all about her. Sometimes I act like this is a movie about me and I am the main character and God is an extra. 

But this is not my movie. I am only a small extra in a crowd of billions of people on the set of God's movie that He is writing about Himself. 

Think about that for a little while, and then talk to God. 

Do I speak to Him as the Holy Creator of the universe? 

I had to stop and apologize to God for thinking that life is about me. I know it's not about me, but in my heart, sometimes I think it is about me. 

Then I read Psalm 103.

Let all that I am praise the Lord: with my whole heart, I will praise His holy name. Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things He does for me....

Wait....it sounds like David loves God's "stuff" just like I do....."all the good things he does for me." I really do love the stuff, but do I love Him because He gives me good things, or do I love Him for who He is? Let's keep reading ,...

He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies. He fills my life with good things. My youth is renewed like the eagle's! 

The Lord is compasstionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. 

Wow! He does a lot for me. This is not my movie, but for such a small part in God's movie, why does He do all these things, just for me? I am so sinful. I sin against this Holy powerful God every day. This is the God who can zap me at any time. He is perfect and because of His perfection, He does not look at sin. He can't. And since I sin every day, He should probably just zap me. That's what I would do if I were God. I would zap all the bad people. And then I would zap the people who think they are good. Because compared to God, none of us are good, but we sometimes think we are. And God loves us anyway! He is "filled with unfailing love."

He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. He does not punish us for all our sins, He does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve. For his unfailing love toward those who fear Him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth. He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. 

"As far as the east is from the west." That means what? He doesn't remember my sins? I think He does. He knows everything. He didn't just "forget." "He has removed our sins" means He took them off of the record. He chooses to forgive me.

The Lord is like a father to His children, tender and compassionate to those who fear Him. For He knows how weak we are; He remembers we are only dust. Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows and we are gone-as though we had never been here.

We are weak. We are dust. We are like grass. The grass that gets cut every week.  What would we think if a person loved a piece of grass and knew everything about that piece of grass, and cared about how long it lived, and watered it carefully every time it needed something.

This piece of grass certainly thinks a lot of herself. I ask God why He made it rain when I thought it should be sunny. I ask him why He let the bugs crawl on me. Doesn't He know how much I hate bugs? I ask him to help me be very green today and perfect so that He will be pleased with how I look. Then I start thinking what the other pieces of grass think about me. Did a bug take a bite out of me? Why did the He let that happen? Why didn't he keep that bug off of me?

I could go on and on about this grass. That's what we do isn't it? Make it all about us? Our short lives that are only like grass, we think that it's about us. 

The Lord is like a father to His children, tender and compassionate to those who fear Him. For He knows how weak we are; He remembers we are only dust. Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows and we are gone-as though we had never been here.

But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear Him. His salvation extends to the grandchildren of those who are faithful to His covenant.

Hold on! Back up! I thought we were just pieces of grass. David just said that the Lord "extends salvation to the grandchildren of those who are faithful to His covenant." 

That would be me. I am a grandchild of those who are faithful to His covenant. So the powerful Creator extended salvation to a grandchild who had never done anything to deserve it. He set things in motion before I was even born because my grandparents were faithful to His covenant. 

The Lord has made the heavens His throne; from there He rules over everything. 

Do you know how big the heavens are? The universe is so vast we cannot comprehend it's size, yet, they are God's throne. What a majestic throne He has. He is so huge and powerful! 

Praise the Lord, you angels, you mighty ones who carry out His plans, listening for each of His commands. Yes, praise the Lord, you armies of angels who serve Him and do His will! Praise the Lord, everything He has created, everything in all His kingdom. 

Let all that I am praise the Lord!

So this huge, powerful all-knowing, perfect Creator....do I love Him or just His stuff? How, after thinking about Him as He truly is, can I come to Him like a whiny child? Like a piece of grass asking why it has to rain today. 

I want to live a life that points to Him and gives Him praise because of who He is. Not because of all the times He watered this piece of grass or kept the bugs off of me. I want to be with the other grass that He looks at after cutting it and says, "Now that's a nice lawn of grass. I'm so glad I made that grass! That particular lawn I made [not necessarily one blade of grass, but the whole lawn] is especially green, and since I cut it, it smells nice, too!"

And He loves me as if I were His only piece of grass. That's crazy love, right there!

Psalm 103 taken from the New Living Translation.

If this blog post made you think, you should read Crazy Love. 

Seriously, go to the link and download it to your iPhone or Android phone. Did you do it yet? If you are reading this post on your phone, you should read this book on your phone.  You can order the real book with real pages and it says the same things as the one you can get on your phone but since you don't always have books with you, you might not read it and it will probably sit on your bookshelf for a long time and get dusty and then you will forget about it. That's what happens to good books with real pages that people buy for you and you mean to read them but you forget because when you want to read it, it's not with you, so you take out your phone and check facebook. Seriously. You know you already checked your facebook page today and you probably did it on your phone, didn't you? Because we can't go anywhere unless we know what Sally ate for breakfast or if someone liked the picture we posted last night. SERIOUSLY! BUY THE BOOK!

Are you seriously still reading this, and you have not bought the book yet?