Does God Really Like Me?预览

Does God Really Like Me?

Who doesn’t love strawberries?

To get the perfect strawberry, however, farmers do two very drastic things. 

First, every strawberry plant is cloned from a carefully cultivated, perfect strawberry. All defects and deformity removed. All that remains are perfect clones of that one perfect strawberry. 

Second, the soil is fumigated with chemicals to kill off everything in the soil but the strawberry—and then sheets of plastic are put over the soil to keep everything else out. 

Normal strawberries grow in normal soil and come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. But perfect strawberries come from sterilized soil and perfect strawberry seeds.

In our relationship with God, we sometimes treat ourselves the same way. 

We say, “If I could just get rid of this imperfection, if I could just hide these faults, then God would like me. If I wasn’t so impulsive, clumsy, loud, quiet. If I was just a little thinner, a little richer, a little taller, had a little more hair, then God would like me.”

God may love us, but sometimes it feels like God only likes part of us—the spiritual part.

But that’s not true!

The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus—who is God—“became flesh and lived among us” ( John 1:14). God became a human being, just like us. 

Jesus experienced every aspect of our human lives. He was lavished with gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and yet lived poor as dirt. He knew the joy of friendship and the sorrow of betrayal. He was surrounded by crowds and yet abandoned by all. He was loved by His family and was called crazy by the same people. He lived a full life and yet died in agony. He experienced the full height and depth of human flesh.

Jesus understands what it is like to be human. As much as you say, “I don’t want to be me,” Jesus says, “I love you so much that I became like you!”

From Does God Really Like Me? by Cyd Holsclaw and Geoff Holsclaw