Is God Really with Us? Exploring Doubt and Faith

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It's a hard thing to do, John, when you're always ruled by performance and hyper -introspection, and am

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I doing enough? Is the Lord with me? We suspect that He's not. Does He see? Does He know?

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Does He care? Our suspicion is that He doesn't. Is the Lord with us? Is He in this?

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I mean, how can we know? It's gotta be in things that we can see and measure. Does the Lord— like, will

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He really save me? In the end, like, will I finally be saved? How can I know? I gotta do enough.

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Does the Lord really delight in me? Does He really, like, take joy in saving me?

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How can I know? I gotta be good enough. This is what we do. That's right.

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Yeah, that's right. What's interesting, I've been doing more and more just reading of the Old Testament.

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You're in Exodus, so this will resonate with you. It is interesting how much

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Israel will project on God the theology they received from Egypt.

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In that God is transactional, He's angry, He must be appeased. And so it's easier to appease these other gods because they're not as scary as Yahweh.

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So we're going to go back to these ones. They're not holy like Yahweh is. That's right. And, you know, we kind of know what we're going to get.

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And so I'd rather take a lesser power and know what I'm going to get. And then

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God has to come in and correct their theology. I mean, how many Psalms are written about the love and mercy and kindness of God?

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Because Israel has to constantly be reminded of it because they don't believe it. They've never experienced, one, human love that way.

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But number two, they've never experienced a deity's love and affection in that way. And I think it's interesting that, you know,

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John is writing this conversation with Jesus and the conversation, sorry, with Nicodemus and Jesus.

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And the conversation doesn't go like this. God got so fed up with humanity. He finally had to send his son to correct it all.

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It's not what he says. He says, oh, the father loves so much that he sacrificed his son.

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And then Jesus says, do you want to know what the example of all supreme love?

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Like there is no greater love. You cannot out love in this way that someone laid down his life.

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And that's what I've done. And so when we think about our relationship with the king, it is not based upon a criminal who's like, well,

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I got to do my time and then I can be set free again. And then, you know, hopefully

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I won't mess up while in prison so that I can get out of good behavior. This is how we live. We live in a constant state of prison with God.

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And he's like, dear child, I love you. You've been set free. There is nothing that will ever separate you from.

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So first of all, I gave the ultimate sacrifice, which is my son. And there's nothing that will separate you from my love going forward.

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And Justin, when we don't take God at his word, we're calling him a liar. And it's not that it's one verse that is obscure.

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I mean, how many verses can we quote talking about the sufficiency of God's love for sinners? While we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for us. I mean, how many verses do we need to quote, right? We love because he first loved us.

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So pietism, it robs us and puts us back into this transactional prison where hopefully we'll get through the probation and God will finally love us because we deserve it.