When the person you are closest to, whom you love the most, does something that hurts you, the first instinctive response is to pull away from them. The pain can be so sharp that all you want to do is to distance yourself from that pain. We've all experienced this, especially those of us who have been married. But my focus in this post is not on what we as humans experience, but rather on what our Creator, our Father in heaven, feels and experiences. We don't tend to think of God as having the same kind of feelings that we do, but nothing could be further than the truth. He doesn't have unrighteous feelings, but he certainly has the whole range of emotions that he created us to also have. For example, there are many Scriptures that refer to God as being a jealous God. Have you ever stopped to try and imagine how God must feel when we turn to something or someone other than him for comfort and security? Or to put it very bluntly, when we find Satan more attractive than God? After all. the enemy of our souls certainly appears more attractive to us than God, doesn't he? The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil will always look more interesting and enticing than the Tree of Life. So how did the Father feel when the first man and woman chose to listen to and obey the serpent rather than him? Nita Johnson, who has had many prophetic experiences and encounters with the Lord, said that Jesus told her once that the second most painful experience the Father ever had was when he had to kick Adam and Eve out of the garden (the most painful, obviously, was turning his back on his own Son, when he hung on the cross).
Theologians may be able to help us get some facts straight about God, but I don't think they have been very helpful in terms of helping us connect with God on a personal, intimate level. They can give a very logical and even accurate reason for why God had to keep Adam and Eve at arm's length, so to speak, after they sinned. Or why God had to exile his people from the land for 70 years after they had consistently turned their backs on him. Or why God warned the Ephesian church in Revelation 2 that if they didn't repent he would have to remove the "lampstand" (the light of his presence) from them. Yes, God is too holy to tolerate sin. But if we stopped to imagine his feelings, I think we would be much more impacted and maybe, just maybe, think twice before we jump back into our favorite sin. Here are some Scriptures that reveal something about how God feels:
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has born?
Though she may forget,
I still will not forget! (Isaiah 49:15)
" O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone
those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your
children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,
but you were not willing!" (Mt.23:37)
Somehow I find it helpful and even critically important to get beyond my own feelings and connect with the reality of God's feelings. Isn't that what intimacy is all about, what God created us for . . . to connect with him (as well as others, especially our spouses) at an emotional level? One of the most emotionally disturbing stories in the Bible is where God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, on an altar. Do you think that maybe, just maybe, God was wanting to communicate something to his close friend at an emotional level? Don't you think God wants to communicate with any and all of us who want to get to know him better, at that same emotional (not just intellectual) level? And what do we do, when in the process of trying to draw closer to God, we feel jilted, abandoned by him?
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