Why God Made Us, Why He Saved Us

I was doing a bit of songwriting today, which can be for me a time of revelation coming as I just sing whatever comes into my head. It's funny how the greatest revelations can be of the simplest truths isn't it? I was working on a song with a chorus that just says "the more we know your love, the more we love you" and the verses just talk about how as we know and experience God as he really is, in his love and his delight in us as his children, praise and love is our natural unforced response to him.

Anyway, God just starting speaking to me about how much he just want to be with his people. All his demands in the law, his demands for people to worship him alone, are to those who are separated from him. The demands come to show them that their hearts are far from him, to reveal the lack of his presence with them. On his children, those who are in Christ, he does not place demands and requirements because he is in a love relationship with them (made possible by Jesus who fulfilled every requirement on our behalf). The reason God made us is because he wanted to fellowship with us, and the reason he saved us was because his heart was broken when sin broke our fellowship with him. He could not rest until he restored the relationship between us and him, and he was willing to do whatever it took to make it happen, even coming to earth and dying on a cross in utter shame experiencing for himself the separation from the Father that sin caused.

I've always heard that the moment that the Father turned his face away from Jesus was the worst part for Jesus, causing him to cry out "why have you forsaken me". And I think that is in essence of the problem of fallen man, they have been separated from God and live in the world forsaken and lost and alone. That's why one of the greatest promises for us as believers is that Jesus will never leave us or forsake us, in fact he promised to send his own Spirit to live with us and in us forever. Just because he wanted to be with us all the time as close as he could get, because he's in love with us! So when we sin as believers and think we have to distance ourselves from him, it's the most hurtful thing we can do to him. When we do that we're rejecting his sacrifice on our behalf, not believing his love for us.

We think he only loves us if we're doing what we think he requires of us, that he loves us because he can benefit from us in some way. But the reason he wants to use us on earth to do his work, is because he wants to be with us! He could do everything that needs to be done without us, but in joining with us to do things we get to know him and experience his love for us in a whole new way. Like any relationship on earth, as we join together in a common purpose and work together we develop a stronger and stronger bond and trust, we get to know one another intimately. I think that's what God is after with us in allowing us to remain on earth to accomplish things for his kingdom.

I don't know why we sometimes act like when we ask God to manifest himself as we meet together we have to hold our breath and cross our fingers. He wants to be with us more than anything else, and when we just believe that we open our hearts to receive all he wants to bless us with. And he comes. That's when we experience the most wonderful and amazing, glorious thing there is in the world to experience, and we know that all we really want is found in him...