Does God Have Real Feelings FOR YOU?

Jesus looked at him and loved him.  Mark 10:21a


I hated it when preachers would tell me to take John 3:16 and insert my name.  Jesus didn't say, "For God so loved Olatunde...."  Jesus wasn't talking to me.  He was talking to Nicodemus more than 2000 years ago.  But there was a young man who asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life. Jesus told the man he knew the commandments, and the young man said he'd kept them from the time he was a boy.  Something about how the young man said this made Jesus look at him...and love him. 


It was like Jesus felt a kind of tenderness towards what he saw in this young man.  But it was for this young man. Jesus looked at him.  Not me.  Not you.  Why am I harping on this?


Because God still looks at each of us, and we shouldn't have to insert our names in Bible verses any more than this young man did.  We don't do this in our relationships with our friends and the people we deeply love.  I don't do this with my children.  Sometimes my youngest daughter just tells me out of the blue, "Daddy, I think I love you."  Why does she do this?  I never know.  But I look at her and I love her.  Or it may not be anything as sentimental or touching as her spontaneously cute "I THINK I love you."  Sometimes I look at her playing to herself, talking to herself, or reading to herself.  I look at Andromeda and I love her. 


We don't feel God's look of love because we make God and the Bible the same thing.  We think God is the Bible and the Bible is God.  We think having a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" means reading about Jesus looking at a young man and loving him, and then substituting our names with that young man.  But we tell people that the story about this young man, whom Jesus looked at and loved, is a REAL story that REALLY happened in history.  Not to you or me.  To him.  Between him and Jesus.


And we tell people Jesus is alive.  He still has eyes.  He still looks and loves. 


I have felt the gaze of God on me.  I have known the listening ear who lets me tell Him my deepest longings, and He tells me His in return.  Yes.  God talks to me and I listen.  Conversation.  Is He not a person, the Person, in this "personal relationship with Jesus Christ?"


When I read the scriptures, the Spirit reads them to me and with me, being the Author and all.  There is nothing better than the Author reading His work to you and explaining how He felt when He was writing it. 


And when I'm not reading scriptures with the Spirit of Christ, and we're just talking, I feel like the only thing in this world worth having is His voice.  Conversation with Jesus. 


I know that God has real feelings for me.  That He looks at me and loves me.  I'm not inserting my name in the Bible when I say that.  Nor am I saying it because the Bible says "God is love."  I'm saying that Jesus is alive in me by His Spirit, and that He talks and listens to me just like He did with that young man that He looked at and loved.


This is normal.  It's normal for a Father to talk to His little children, daily and constantly.  It's normal for a Husband to talk intimately with his wife.  It's normal for a Guide to stay close to the one He is guiding. And it's normal for our Heavenly Father and Brother and Comforter to look at us, and love us.


Does God have real feelings for you?
You knew the answer from the beginning, because you've felt Him look at you, and love you.


(Tell me a time when you felt Jesus look at you and love you.  I want to you to share this with me because this is what the Christian life is all about.   Share this in the Comments, through Blogger or Google plus.)