I know you’ve heard it ad nauseum. But let me quote it once again. John 3:16 states, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” Anyone who has grown up in the church has been able to spew it out mindlessly since he was old enough to string a sentence that long together. Its popularity is understandable, of course; it is perhaps the most succinct statement of the gospel in the entire Bible.
This verse, however, made me feel disconnected from faith when I was young. I couldn’t understand how God loved me personally. Yeah, I believed that I was lumped into the “whosoever,” but only by the default nature of the word. I believed in theory that God loved me, but only because He had proclaimed His love for everyone. It’s like hearing about a party with an open invite. Sure, in theory you’re invited, but that doesn’t mean that the one throwing the party actually wants or expects you to be there.
I’ve spent most of my life believing that God loved me only in theory, that He loved me only because He’d so rashly proclaimed “whosoever” long before I’d ever been born. It’s just been very recently that I’ve started to accept that maybe He loves me specifically, and intentionally.
But how do I know this? I recently had a conversation with a friend who has been feeling the same way I had been for so long. The worship band had been playing “How He Loves,” with that epic refrain of “He loves us, oh how He loves us,” and he felt completely disconnected from the emotions expressed by the people around him. I tried to encourage him, to tell him I had felt much the same in the past but things had changed. But I couldn’t explain the process. I couldn’t look back and give tangible and useful evidence of the change. There is no twelve-step program for accepting and recognizing God’s intimate love for us. It was just a miracle that God had worked in my life, and I felt helpless in knowing all I could do was to recommend hanging on and waiting for God. I know from my own experience how hollow that sounds to someone in that place.
What changed in me? How is it that I’ve dared to believe that maybe God really does love me in a personal way? The truth is, I had always been hoping for some kind of transcendent moment where God might float down on a big cloud and proclaim in a Morgan Freeman voice that He really does love me, and that all my dreams will come true; I would feel all tingly and ecstatic and want to start dancing in the aisles during church. But I’m sure that even the most surefooted Christians, the ones most secure in their relationship with God, would say that those moments where they feel the direct contact of the Creator are few and far between. There are few who can genuinely say that God has spoken to them audibly, or who can claim to have seen angels, or who have felt the physical touch of invisible hands and arms. And these occurrences are rare even for them.
In my own life I cannot claim any experiences of this nature. The closest I’ve come is a dream I had maybe a month ago, and it’s the only dream I’ve ever had that I can even remember. It started out as a standard dream, where various unrelated points of my past and present life intersected in typically bizarre ways; what details I can recall of this part were related to memories that have contributed to my sense of low self-worth. Then I remember distinctly being surrounded by friends (their faces were not visible, but I knew deep in my heart that they were genuine friends), and they presented me with a jacket. And just looking at it I knew that it would fit me perfectly, and be warm and comfortable and cozy. And all over the lining inside the jacket were scrawled messages of Truth. Like the people around me, the messages were indistinguishable, but I just knew in the most profound way that they were words of Truth about who I was, and how much they cared about me, and how valuable I was. I turned out the inner pockets in the coat, and even there I found Truth written in the shimmery, silken lining. I began to weep, and at that point I woke up to find myself weeping in reality as well.
I can also remember an occasion or two in which I was heavily overcome with a sense of the Spirit while reading Scripture. One such event happened at Bonnaroo, of all places, as I read through Isaiah one morning after the sun had risen too high for me to sleep in the tent, and it’s a moment that I referenced in the lyrics of a song I’ve written and recorded called “First Light.”
But these things are very subjective and personal to me, and of little value recounted to another. So how can I relay to someone that God really does love them personally and intimately? The words “God loves you” ring empty in a scientific and technological society that relies so heavily on the question “Why?”
Let me try approaching this from a different angle.
Evangelism is a major part of the Christian faith. We are called to spread the gospel to unbelievers, and the afore-mentioned John 3:16 is a popular quote in this endeavor. If it were possible to simplify evangelism into two styles, or categories, I would say that there are those that evangelize through the use of words and those that do so through the use of actions. Certainly there is a place for both approaches, but most Christians would tend to lean one way or the other.
Mere words are not enough in this society, though. In 1741, Jonathan Edwards preached the infamous “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and masses of people were converted. In more recent times, Billy Graham packed out stadiums with his preaching. But modern society has seen an overload of opinions, thanks to the internet and the constant exposure to mass media. Anyone can spout any kind of opinion anywhere, and this makes people jaded to words alone. Maybe passing out tracts in a train station was a viable means of evangelism in the past, but not anymore.
Our society increasingly needs the evangelism of actions. Kids who are growing up in shattered homes, and surrounded by constant stimulus and chatter, are likely only to listen to those who show them genuine love in tangible ways. Words require actions to gain anyone’s attention, and love—genuine, unforced love—is certainly the sort of action that can see positive results.
All that to say, we know that God has called us to be His hands and feet. It’s a cliché already, and Audio Adrenaline copped it for a cheesy youth group anthem. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true and viable. And so that is the more common form of effectual evangelism in our society. We feed the poor, we donate to charities, and we pitch in to help a neighbor who has fallen upon disaster.
Unfortunately, the idea of us being God’s hands and feet has generally been typecast as evangelism, as only being a means of saving souls. But God has called us to be His hands and feet to our fellow believers as well. I’ve heard the words “God loves you” all my life, but in the absence of tangible signs directly from God Himself, it only began to sink into me that God loved me when His followers became His hands and feet to me. And it obviously wasn’t intended as proselytizing; I was already “in the fold,” so why bother? No, they loved me and cared for me genuinely, and this was God’s love becoming tangible in my life.
I think about when Ryan Rado took time out of his day to pick me up where I was stranded by the side of the road and help me pump up the flat tire after I’d succeeded in accidentally letting all the air out. I think about another flat tire, when Aaron Holden picked me up at nearly midnight to give me a ride home, and then Ryan Stubbs came to my house early the next morning and drove me around town while I got the tire situation worked out. I think about all the times Brady Lane has worked his magic underneath the hood of my car. Wow. God has shown His love to me so many times through my piece-of-crap car. It kind of makes the headaches and the wasted money worth it, in a skewed sort of way.
I think about the year my birthday fell on poker night at the Stumps’, and Jamie and the others took the time to bake a cake as a surprise for me. I think about the times I’ve been completely broke, and friends gave me food or had me over for dinner. I think about all the conversations I had with friends like Chris Hayzlett and Kevin Bender, who were gracious enough to put up with my constant complaining and confusion and generally exasperating ramblings in self-loathing. I think about all the friends who have taken time out of their extremely busy schedules to indulge my desire to play music live, or to record it better.
I could go on and on with occasions where God showed His tangible love to me through His hands and feet on earth. I had just failed to recognize it all as such until now. I had only understood the concept of God’s love personified in His followers as a form of evangelism. I had never extended it to the way we Christians interact with each other. I know God loves me personally and intimately because He has placed these wonderful people in my life who love me personally and intimately even though they really don’t have to. They’ve never proclaimed any sort of “whosoever.” They’ve gone far above and beyond what would be considered basic human goodwill.
Yes, on occasion God will choose to interact with His people directly. But it is a rare thing. His day-to-day expression of His intimate, personal love for us is through the amazing people He puts in our lives. Of course, people are flawed conduits of God’s love, and often we fail. A person who is intensely lonely and who has been hurt and abandoned by those around them is not unloved of God. He is only surrounded by broken hands and broken feet. Fortunately, God is also the Great Physician, but that’s another thought for another time….
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Well said.
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