God is not mad at you free download

It was a pure, genuine, sincere and loving heart of a little boy wanting to do something kind and loving for his father. It is the constant nagging feeling of never doing well enough or being good enough. We ought to be doing so-and-so, or at least more of it, and should be better than we are. We should pray better, read the Bible more and be kinder and more patient. We should be less selfish, more loving and on and on.

We never run out of things on our list to make us dissatisfied with ourselves. This feeling haunts us in all areas of life, but more in our spiritual life than any other area. We believe that God is mad at us! I grew up in a home with an angry father who was impossible to please. I spent every waking moment trying to please him, but no matter what I did, I lived with the gnawing feeling that he was probably still mad at me. Perfectionists usually have low self-esteem, and they hope that more perfection in their performance will allow them to feel better about themselves.

If we never feel quite good enough about ourselves, then it is easy to believe that God is not satisfied with us either. We should learn to love ourselves, and to not be against ourselves, rejecting ourselves, or even worse, hating ourselves. It is the ointment that brings healing to your wounded soul. When God told me that it was okay for me to have some weaknesses it sounded too good to be true. He understands them because He took on human flesh in order to identify with us, and He was tempted in every respect just as we are; while He never sinned, He is not shocked when we fail.

I am certainly not saying that we should not work with the Holy Spirit to overcome our weaknesses, but it is a process, and even as we overcome some of them, there are others that still remain.

We should learn to be happy about our progress instead of feeling guilty about how far we still have to go. If we focus on our weaknesses we will continually feel discouraged, but if we focus on our progress it increases our joy.

Surely, if God expects us to do that for one another, He is prepared to do it for us. Soon a beautiful Golden Retriever walked out of the backroom and five puppies followed her. One of them was lagging behind due to what appeared to be an injured leg. The boy asked how much the puppies were and was told thirty dollars. He only had two dollars and seventy cents, so he asked if could pay that now and then pay fifty cents each week until the puppy was paid for.

The boy insisted on having the crippled puppy and as the owner once again tried to change his mind, suddenly the boy pulled up his pant leg revealing a shriveled leg with a heavy metal brace on it. His strength is made perfect in our weakness 2 Corinthians His love and total acceptance give us the courage to live with confidence in the midst of our imperfections. You have permission to have weaknesses and not to have to constantly strive to attain something that is not attainable.

The more we realize that He loves us the way we are, the more we love Him, and that love for Him causes us to want to change for the right reason. It was a system stating that if they would keep His law, then He would bless them. When they failed, sacrifices had to be made by them or the High Priest who stood in their place.

These sacrifices atoned for their sins. They were given laws that told them the right thing to do, but they were not given any help in doing them. They had to try to be good, but they failed and had to make sacrifices to make up for their mistakes. This explanation, of course, is a very basic and simple one, but I hope it will serve my purpose in this portion of the book.

Under this old covenant, sin could be covered by these sacrifices, but never removed. The sense of guilt connected to sin was ever present.

But the good news is that God has made a new covenant with man, and He ratified or sealed it in His own blood. It is a better covenant and one that is far superior to the old. The old covenant was initiated with the blood of animals, but the new was initiated with the sinless blood of Jesus Christ. Under the new covenant, Jesus fulfilled or kept all of the law of the old covenant and died in our place to pay for our sins and misdeeds. He took the punishment that we deserved, and promised that if we would believe in Him and all that He did for us, He would forever stand in our place, and our responsibility to keep the law would be met in Him.

The problem that we have now is that many new covenant believers do believe in Jesus and accept Him as their Savior, but they still live under the old covenant by trying to keep the law in their own strength.

The old covenant focused on what man could do, but the new covenant focuses on what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. Read Hebrews 8 and 9 for more study in this area. Hebrews The law is perfect, but it cannot perfect us because we have no ability to keep it perfectly. We should avoid living under rules and regulations thinking that if we keep them perfectly God will be pleased.

The sin principle in our flesh is actually incited and stirred up by the law. In addition they required their members to read the Bible through each year, and attend at least one of the church prayer meetings each week. They required all of the church members to serve in some capacity in the church. They had to work in the nursery, or do volunteer work of some kind.

Mary would eventually not want to go to church, dread Bible reading and prayer and feel pressured by serving at church. The more we are told that we cannot do something, the more we want to do it. If Mary thinks that she cannot miss church without being questioned, it will only make her not want to go. That, sadly, is human nature.

If you repeatedly tell little Johnnie not to touch the glass table, he will become very interested in touching it even though he previously may not have even noticed it was there. Even if he is too frightened to touch it in front of you, he will certainly touch it when he believes you cannot see him do it.

Your law against touching the glass table has actually given Johnnie an interest in doing it. The law is good, but it cannot make us good. Only God can do that by giving us a new nature, a new heart and His Spirit. The law points out our weaknesses, but Jesus strengthens us in them.

The law shows us our problem, but Jesus solves our problem! God gave the law so we would eventually know that we needed a Savior. The law is actually designed to bring us to the end of ourselves, or to the end of self-effort and works of the flesh. He does not want us to be self-reliant and He will not allow us to succeed as long as we are. The law is perfect, holy and righteous, and it shows us what sin is. The law was intended to lead us to Jesus, not to more and more struggling for perfection.

It is intended to make us fully aware that we need God, and to make us learn to lean on Him. A legalistic approach to our relationship with God can actually steal every drop of life in us and leave us burned out and exhausted until we die to the law and begin to live for, in and through Christ.

Galatians Although I no longer strive for perfection, I do desire to do my best each day. I encourage you to do the same thing.

Our survey at the office revealed that many people simply wanted to know when they had done enough. Many of them, I am sure, had done their very best but still felt pressured to do more, and that is impossible. We can do our best, but we cannot offer God perfection, and we should not feel pressured to do so. Knowing it was not his best, the student did the paper again, and once again the professor gave it back to him with the same phrase at the bottom.

Then they tell you practice makes perfect. Winston Churchill Sandra is a lovely young woman who has struggled with anger and perfectionism. Here is her story in her own words.

I have a strong tendency toward perfectionism and could not seem to rest unless everything on my list was accomplished. I would rarely allow myself to rest, or even if I was resting physically, I could not shut down mentally or emotionally. My husband of twenty years is a person who loves peace and he watched me continually get frustrated with life and would pray for me that I would see what I was doing to myself.

Yes, I was doing it to myself! I felt like a failure at the end of each day because I set unrealistic and ridiculous impossible to reach goals for myself. When I saw that I was not going to get everything accomplished that I had planned to do I would go into a panic and try to work harder and faster.

Of course my family could feel the frustration I lived with and if they needed my assistance with something while I was in panic mode it would make me even more panic-stricken, anxious and angry at myself. The more they needed, the more I felt like a failure.

After all, what could be wrong with wanting to do everything right? There were even times when I felt like I hated my life, which was confusing to me because I have a wonderful husband and two beautiful girls and a lovely home. In addition to that I have known Jesus as my Savior since I was ten years old. So, why did I hate my life and feel unhappy? What I really hated was the fact that I felt like all I ever did was work.

I really thought that my schedule and all that I had to do was my problem. I need serious help! I remember typing words into my journal so fast I could barely keep up. I am way too mental about things and this year I want to be more like Jesus. Jesus lived in close fellowship with His Father and spent His time helping and being good to people!

I am getting off the accomplishment treadmill. I am done trying to get my worth and value out of being perfect so people will admire me, or even so I can admire myself. God thinks I am so special that He sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross for me, and He did it to save me from myself as well as from my sin. God loves me deeply. I receive His love, I consciously take it in, just like breathing. Day after day, I watched carefully to make sure the change was real and not going to evaporate as quickly as it came.

After a few weeks went by, I realized that on January 2 God gave me a revelation that was changing my life. I had turned from the negative to the positive! The feeling of being a failure was completely gone. My worth and value was no longer in what I accomplished, but in what Jesus had accomplished for me out of His deep love for me. I needed to realize that God was not mad at me and to forgive myself for being imperfect, and her book helped me do that.

She was anxious, frustrated and angry, but now she is peaceful, relaxed and happy. The tyranny of everything we think we ought to do and should have done or not done and the self-deprecation it creates produce an oversensitive conscience that is filled with anxiety, guilt and condemnation. If my husband made a mistake, he got over it so quickly that it irritated me.

It irritated me because when I made mistakes, I suffered for days agonizing over it, and I could not seem to shake the guilty feeling that my oversensitive conscience produced. I assumed that his anger meant that I was guilty of something. The same freedom that Sandra talked about, and that I am talking about, is available for you if you need it.

People who live with guilt often make a very deep commitment to God to do better and to try harder. When people try very hard and still experience failure, a cloud of doom often hangs over them and they can easily believe there is no hope, but in Christ there is always hope. To be a prisoner means that we are locked up and unable to get away from a certain place or thing.

Live your life locked up with hope and unable to get away from it and you will see amazing things happen. No matter what you have gone through or might be going through right now, you can hope have faith that God is working on your behalf right now and that you will see the results of His work in your life. The more we study and get to know God personally, the more we know the truth, and it sets us free little by little.

It will drive the darkness out of your soul and you will have a healthy conscience that can receive conviction from the Holy Spirit, but not condemnation from the devil. It had to be cleaned every day, and I mean everything dusted, mirrors shined, floors mopped and vacuumed, et cetera. I would not allow myself to go out with friends and have any enjoyment or relaxation until the house was cleaned. If I tried to enjoy myself, I felt guilty, not because I had really done anything wrong, but because I was living under laws I had made for myself.

When the children came home after school and began messing the house up, I went into my fits, as I lovingly call them now.

I nagged them all the time to pick things up. It was so bad that they really could not relax in my presence much of the time. Fortunately God changed me before much damage was done and I am happy to say that we all have great relationships now. I felt better about myself when all of my surroundings were neat and tidy, but how we feel about ourselves should come from inside, not from outside. What kind of laws have you made for your own life? Anything that is a law becomes something that you are obligated to do, not something you enjoy doing.

If prayer and Bible study is a law for you, then you probably dread it and find it hard to get to, but if you realize it is a privilege and not a law, you can enjoy it. The law takes the life out of anything that we do. The law kills, but the Spirit makes alive 2 Corinthians The only way a thing can be filled with life and joy is if we are led by the Holy Spirit to do it and if our motive for doing it is love for God and wanting to glorify Him.

You have made a law of a thing when you feel guilty if you miss doing it one time, even for a good reason. I still like a clean house, but I no longer feel guilty if all my work is not finished at the end of the day because doing it is not a law to me. I will do it, but I will enjoy my life in the process.

Here is an example that may help you understand further. It is not a law for us, but something that we are led by the Holy Spirit to do or not to do.

In the past week we have passed by three people begging on the side of the road, but we stopped and gave twenty dollars to only one. These types of decisions are not made with the mind alone, but they are discerned in the spirit. The apostle Paul gives us great insight in Romans chapter 7 about not making laws out of things, but instead learning to be led by the Holy Spirit.

But now we are discharged from the Law and have terminated all intercourse with it, having died to what once restrained and held us captive. So now we serve not under [obedience to] the old code of written regulations, but [under obedience to the promptings] of the Spirit in newness of life.

I urge you to refuse to live a life legalistic and to trust God that He will teach you how to clearly be guided by Him in all things.

Perfectionists are very sensitive to what others think of them and they often try so hard to please so many people that they lose themselves.

What I mean is that in an effort to please others, they rarely follow their own heart and do what is pleasing to them or to God.

The need to be popular can make you neurotic and steal your destiny. Some people are addicted to approval. They cannot feel peaceful unless they believe that everyone is pleased with them, and that is something that is next to impossible to accomplish. The apostle Paul said that if he had been trying to be popular with people, he would never have become an apostle of Jesus Christ Galatians Any time a person is a leader of other people, others will criticize him or her.

As a leader, it is impossible for me to make one decision that will perfectly suit everyone, so I have to make my decisions based on what I believe God wants me to do, and not what people want me to do.

If Paul had an unbalanced need for approval, he could not have fulfilled his destiny. The Bible states that Jesus made Himself of no reputation Philippians We cannot always be God-pleasers and people-pleasers at the same time. If you are overly concerned about what people think of you, then you need to seriously consider what that is going to do to you long-term.

And it wears them out mentally, emotionally and physically. But we are the only ones who can change our situation. We create many of our own problems, and we are the only ones that can solve them. Although it is true that people should not pressure us to do everything they want us to do, it is equally true that we are the ones who have the responsibility not to allow ourselves to try to please them to the point that it causes us to feel pressured.

The eleven disciples who remained in the boat probably thought Peter was very foolish. You can buy friends and acceptance by letting people control you, but you will have to keep them the same way you obtained them. It becomes very draining after a time, and you will end up resenting them for the very thing you allowed them to do. Sometimes people we think are angry with us are not angry at all. It is our fears that give us that perception.

Refuse to spend your life in fear of what people think, and begin to confront that fear. Get to the root of all your fears and you will probably find that most of them are unfounded and that they exist only in your imagination. The pathway to God is not perfect performance. That is so simple that we miss it. We need to believe in Jesus? Surely God wants more out of us than that! More than anything, God wants us to trust Him and to believe His Word.

It simply is not for sale! Grace is a gift that cannot be purchased with our performance or anything else. It can only be received by faith. It is His love, mercy and forgiveness available at no cost to us. Grace is also the power to change us and make us into what He wants us to be.

You can be free today from the anger and anxiety that is produced by perfectionism by giving up your own works and fully trusting in the work that Jesus has done for us all. Remember, the work that God requires of you is that you believe in the One Whom He has sent John — Grace not only forgives us, it enables us to forgive those who have hurt us in life. Repressed anger about the way others have treated us is often the root of perfectionism and the anger and anxiety it causes.

Forgiving our abusers or enemies is a major part of our own healing. His father, a military man, was extremely demanding, rarely saying a kind word, always punishing him with harsh criticism and insisting that he do better. The father had decided that he would never permit his son to feel any satisfaction from his accomplishments, reminding him there were always new goals ahead. When Dave was a little boy, his dad gave him a bicycle, unassembled, with the command that he put it together.

When Dave played football in high school, his father was unrelenting in his criticism. Facing my father was more stressful than facing any opposing team. He chose to play football at the University of Georgia because its campus was farther from home than any other school that offered him a scholarship. After college, he became the second-round draft pick of the St.

During visits home he stimulated conversation with him and listened with interest to what his father had to say. He learned for the first time what his grandfather had been like—a tough lumberjack known for his quick temper.

This new awareness affected Dave dramatically. By the time he died, I can honestly say we were friends. Usually because they are hurting and have unresolved issues in their own life. The healing of the damaged emotions that often cause perfectionism does take time, but no matter how long your journey takes, please remember that God loves you the same every step of the way.

God at work! Person in progress! Psalm When we hear sermons about Father God from the pulpit, there is often a barrier between the message and the listeners. For many listeners or readers , as soon as you use the word father, walls go up. Because of abusive fathers, negligent fathers or absentee fathers, our image of God as a father has become distorted and even painful.

If someone had an angry father, it is quite natural to view Father God as angry, too. I hope you are one of the blessed ones who had an awesome dad, but for many that is not the case. I read that about 25 percent of American households are single-parent homes, and usually the parent is the mother.

Out of the other 75 percent, many fathers are angry, abusive or rarely home. The atmosphere in the home I grew up in was very tense. He was virtually impossible to please. I know now that he was angry with himself because of the sin in his life, but rather than face it, he deflected it onto other people. My father sexually abused me for many years, got drunk every weekend and displayed violent rages in which he often ended up beating my mother.

I certainly never felt loved or cared for. They have a feeling of impending doom or danger hanging over them most of the time. God wants us to feel safe with Him. He is a loving Father, kind, forgiving, generous, long-suffering, patient and faithful. But for those who have father issues, that truth is very hard to believe.

Catch me! We both fell to the ground. For a moment after I caught him I could hardly talk. Can you give me one good reason why you did that??? He could live life to the hilt because his father could be trusted.

Sadly, many of us did not have that experience with our earthly fathers, but we can have it now with Father God. God is definitely not like people. If your earthly father was absent, you need to know that Father God is omnipresent, and that means He is everywhere all the time. You will never be anywhere that God is not with you. If your earthly father was abusive or angry, your Heavenly Father wants to give you recompense for the way you were treated. He promises to give us a double reward for our former trouble if we will trust Him.

Instead of your [former] shame you shall have a twofold recompense; instead of dishonor and reproach [your people] shall rejoice in their portion. Therefore in their land they shall possess double [what they had forfeited]; everlasting joy shall be theirs. Isaiah The promise in this verse carried me through many dark and difficult days while I was working through the process of overcoming the way my father treated me, and it will help you, too, if you will take it as your own.

Receive it as a direct promise from God to you. He is a God of justice. He loves to make wrong things right and He is waiting to do it for you. Consider these verses: He sets on high those who are lowly, and those who mourn He lifts to safety.

Job In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for You, Lord, alone make me dwell in safety and confident trust. Psalm And He led them on safely and in confident trust, so that they feared not; but the sea overwhelmed their enemies. Psalm Hold me up, that I may be safe and have regard for Your statutes continually!

Psalm The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever leans on, trusts in, and puts his confidence in the Lord is safe and set on high. Proverbs [And indeed] the Lord will certainly deliver and draw me to Himself from every assault of evil He will preserve and bring me safe unto His heavenly kingdom.

To Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen so be it. His Word is powerful and it heals our brokenness. A character trait is something that is part of a person. It is not something the person does occasionally, but he or she does it all the time. In order to trust Him completely, we must know the character of God.

The thing that lies between knowing God and not knowing Him is seeking. God requires that we seek Him, that we have an intense desire to know Him. He states that if we seek Him, we will find Him. If you have no desire to seek and pursue God, then ask Him to give you one. In other words, He is good to all, all the time. His goodness radiates from Him. If you were abused or abandoned in your childhood, you might be wondering why, if God is so good, He did not deliver you from those circumstances.

God has helped me over the years to understand that a parent has great authority over a child, and any wrong or sinful decisions they make do adversely affect their children, especially if there is no counteraction of a godly influence in the home. As soon as people are old enough to make their own choices, they can choose a relationship with God that can heal everything in their life To be honest, very few people grow up without some kind of emotional pain that leaves scars.

Even if our parents are good ones, we still must deal with the rest of the world and sooner or later we will run into someone who will hurt us. We must know how to receive healing from Jesus! Not everything in our life is good, but God can work it out for good if we will trust Him. Joseph suffered much abuse at the hands of family members his brothers as a young boy, but later in life when he had an opportunity to get revenge on them, he said: As for you, you thought evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring about that many people should be kept alive, as they are this day.

Genesis Joseph could have been bitter, but he searched for the good in his abusive situation and it helped him become a man of God who was used to bring help to millions in a time of famine. It is impossible for God not to be good, because it is His character. He was quick to anger, and he always held grudges. If you got on his bad side, you stayed there for a long time.

Perhaps nothing you did was ever good enough for your father, but God is happy with any tiny effort we make to please Him. In His mercy, He overlooks what is wrong with our efforts and chooses to see what is right. The Holy Spirit had to work with me a long time to finally get me to understand the freedom and joy of having a merciful heavenly Father who actually wants to forgive our transgressions. It is impossible to deserve mercy, and that is why it is such a waste of time to try to pay for our mistakes with good works or guilt.

Mercy overrides the rules. You may have grown up in a home that had lots of rules and if you broke any of them, you got into trouble. Although God does intend for us to keep His commands, He understands our nature and is also ready to extend mercy to anyone who will ask for and receive it. But I have trusted, leaned on, and been confident in Your mercy and loving-kindness; my heart shall rejoice and be in high spirits in Your salvation.

When we learn to receive mercy, then we will also be able to give it to others and that is something that most people seriously need. Mercy delivers us from the fear of punishment, or of being rejected. I am thankful to say that I have never experienced that with my heavenly Father since I have come to truly know His character. You may have even thought that it was your fault that he left, even though that was not true. You may have thought your dad left because you were bad, so it would be easy to think that if you are bad, God will leave you, too.

But I can assure you that God is in your life to stay. I have experienced the unfaithfulness of people many times in my life, but at the same time, I have experienced the faithfulness of God. Indeed, God is not like people! God promises that He will never leave you nor forsake you, but will be with you until the very end Matthew He is with you in your times of need and He is planning to provide for all your needs Hebrews God is with you when you are going through trials and He is planning your breakthrough 1 Corinthians When all others forsake you, God will stand by you 2 Timothy — The Lord will pay him back for his actions.

But keep in mind that we only see that reward when we choose to have a godly attitude in our pain. At my first trial no one acted in my defense [as my advocate] or took my part or [even] stood with me, but all forsook me. May it not be charged against them! But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me. And he actually asked God not to hold their unfaithfulness against them.

His heavenly Father was faithful. We have no promise from God that people will always be faithful, but we do have His promise that He will be faithful at all times.

People may shift and change, but God is unchanging. My father lied to me. He promised me things and then refused to do what he had promised when the time came. With my father, things like this happened all the time, but God cannot lie. It is impossible for His Word to fail, and we can step out onto it with certainty Hebrews — Heaven and earth will perish and pass away, but My words will not perish or pass away.

Mark Perhaps you feel that God did let you down at some time in your life, or that one of His promises did not come true for you. Trust God at all times, and never give up. This is one of the ways that we can be faithful to God, as He is to us. No matter how unfaithful your father or others may have been to you, I urge you not to let it ruin your life. There is no better day than today for a fresh start. People may say they forgive us, but then remind us of what we did that hurt them, but God never reminds us of our past sins, because He has forgotten them Hebrews It is part of His character and we can always count on Him to be with us and do all that He has promised to do.

My first husband told me that he loved me but he was unfaithful many times. The list could go on, but I am sure you have a list of your own and that you probably relate to what I am saying.

However, when God says that He loves us, He means it in every way that is important and vital to us. His love always moves Him to action on our behalf, and true love can only be known by the actions that it prompts 1 John — You will see and experience the love of God being manifested in your life if you put your faith in it.

Let me ask you if you have decided to believe that God loves you unconditionally and that He has a good plan for your life.

I pray that you have and that you will begin to expect to see it manifested in your life. The love of God agape seeks the welfare of all and works no ill toward any.

It seeks an opportunity to do good to all men. The God kind of love is the love of a perfect being toward entirely unworthy objects us. It produces a love in us for God, and a desire to help others seek the same. God loves because He must—it is who He is. God is love! Learning to receive the unconditional love of God is the foundation for the rest of our relationship with God. How can we trust people if we are not sure that they love us? How can we expect them to be good or faithful? We cannot!

Even as [in His love] He chose us [actually picked us out for Himself as His own] in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy consecrated and set apart for Him and blameless in His sight, even above reproach, before Him in love.

God decided to love us before we even arrived on planet earth. The apostle Paul urges us to let nothing separate us from the love of God, for it is indeed the most empowering force in the world. God is far above people, and His ways are perfect. Trust Him and let His love heal you. A staff member at Joyce Meyer Ministries recounts: I gave my life to Christ in , however I have been through two failed marriages and lots of disappointments in my life.

All through grade school and high school I was ridiculed and made fun of. My first husband ran away with a seventeenyear-old girl after just four years of marriage. Through my last marriage of twenty-three years, I had become extremely codependent. When that ended, I was hurt and angry and again I was rejected. I believed I was a failure. My self-worth was at its lowest low.

I had been told most of my life that I was fat and ugly, and I felt unlovable. I was used by men and had a great distrust of them, especially any man that was in authority over me.

Keep in mind that I was serving God and going to church this whole time, but I still believed I was unlovable. I wonder how many of them have felt the touch of His Spirit. He is calling out to all of us, wanting us to awaken to Him. I do believe in divine judgment, but I believe in the awesome love of God even more. The very character of God is love, mercy and justice, yet what the culture hears about God is often the opposite.

God must be simply stirring the ocean, blowing the wind and stomping the earth in a rage. He must be judging our sins! He must be mad at us. In the Old Testament, God did judge nations. He led the nation of Israel into captivity for more than years because of its rebellion and idolatry.

We know Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of their sexual perversion and lawlessness see Ezek. God had planned to do the same with the city of Nineveh, but Jonah arrived in time to preach the word of the Lord. The people repented, and God spared the city see Jonah 3. God does judge, but what we must understand is that His mercy and love prevail in the tough times.

If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned.

Did you catch the key word in the last sentence? God plans good for the nations. God loves every nation and calls out to them to serve Him. He is their refuge. He always made a way of escape in the Old Testament, but because the world was under the law, as a just God He had to punish the nations when they were disobedient. No matter what state we find ourselves in, He is there with open arms of love, mercy and compassion.

When disaster strikes, we need only to call upon Him. The truth is, in our Western culture, life is pretty good. We go to bed each night to the sound of some pundit ranting on a hour news channel about the state of the union or some sports commentator bloviating about an overpaid athlete. Remember the statistics I shared on how Americans view God?

Ninety-five percent of our nation sees God as authoritative, benevolent, critical or distant. In other words, the very concept of God carries with it a stigma of control, aloofness or plausible ineptness.

Because of this view of God, we find it easy to believe He might be mad at us. In Third World nations, where life is so hard or it is illegal to be a Christian, the church is growing rapidly, and the believers are passionate. How can this be? I could tell you countless stories of godly people who have experienced tragedies.

When this pastor ran to find his son, all he could see were his shoes sticking out from under the rubble. He knew God was good even though his heart was breaking in two. Churches in China are growing despite the threat of intimidation, arrest and persecution.

Why would they take risks to worship a God who would allow them to be martyred, imprisoned or tortured? Could it be that God is more than just a Santa Claus—type figure, more than a two-hour weekend commitment, more than the mascot for a voting bloc? All of these great leaders have continually praised God through their trials. In fact, they say God has never been closer to them than when they walked through their trials. He is mad about you! You are the apple of His eye.

You want to know how I know this? Here are five ways God proves it is true. God never stops loving you. User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest. Sign up Log in. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip.

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