What’s Your Angle God?!

Lately my three year old has been coming up to my husband and I and telling us she loves us. It’s been completely unprovoked. I didn’t do anything or give her anything. She just out of the blue says “I love you mommy.” Oftentimes it’s accompanied with an embrace. Before you say “Awe. How sweet!”, let me say my husband and I both had the same initial response. “What do you want?” or even “What’s the catch?” I knew after a while, that my response was not the correct response. After meditating and reflecting on this I did come to a conclusion. I sometimes react the same way with God like I did with my toddler.

We want to be blessed. We want good things. Look at all the countless inspirational memes telling us to hold on, the blessing’s coming. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve written things like that before. It’s biblical to encourage one another. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says

“So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.”

‭‭We should be encouraging each other to keep going and not give up. However, how do we, and how do I, respond when God gives me an unprovoked blessing? How do I react when something shows up out of the blue and it wasn’t even something I was asking God for or about? I didn’t know I even needed it. How do we respond when God says He loves us?

I admit even if I don’t verbalize it, I have internally thought about what the blessing will cost me. “What does God want from me? What is He up to? Something’s gotta give.” Those questions reveal that I believe God sometimes has ulterior motives. He’s blessing me but, there’s a catch. “God gave me this $500 yet, He’ll probably tell me to give away $499 of it.” His gifts aren’t truly gifts.

I realize that I actually can view God more like a loan shark than a benevolent Father. He’s going to give me this but, it will come with strings attached; a ridiculous amount of interest. I will be indebted to Him forever. Yes! We are indebted to God though, not in the warped way I was thinking.

God blesses us. He says and shows He loves us simply because, He loves us. There is no other reason for it. He is love and that’s what pours out of Him. (1 John 4:8) When He created us He said it was good. When He created us He didn’t say “Finally I’ve got some servants to do my bidding!” No. He actually created us then gave us a bunch of stuff! He created man and then told him to be fruitful and multiply and gave him dominion over all living things! (Genesis 1) God set our foundation as “I love you just because.” We never started out proving we were lovable, deserving, or even righteous. God just loved us from the start. Nevertheless when we realize we love someone, good deeds flow from that.

If you’ve ever been in love you know about the honeymoon phase. You are just so overcome with love for that person that you don’t just sit and think, you have to do. You have to do something to express that love. There’s lots of gifts, surprises, and romantic gestures. You are thinking of ways to bless them and show how much you care. There are also a lot of what...unprovoked I love you’s! You don’t say it just to hear it back. You say it because that’s what’s in your heart. That’s what’s on your mind. If you don’t get it out you’ll explode! God has always been and will always be in a honeymoon phase with us. He will always be head over heels for us. The problem is we don’t always believe that. We may not believe it because we project on God, our personal experiences with earthly love. The honeymoon phase is great but, it ends. We can fall back into I do for you if you first do for me. I’ll love you only if I feel like you love me. There are strings attached. Man’s love is fickle. God’s love is not. Jeremiah 31:3 says,

“I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to myself.”

If you read the entirety of that chapter it is all about what God is going to do and not what will be done for God. God lavishes love on us not to get something back from us. He just loves us. Now because we love Him, we want to bless Him back. We worship Him. We praise Him. We show goodness to others. We stay away from sin. We seek to be holy and live holy. We seek to be godly examples to the world. It should only be because we love Him. It should not be because we’re trying to pay God back. We can never repay Him for Jesus. It should not be because we fear what He’ll do to us if we slip up. That’s not love. That’s bondage and God is a bondage breaker. Everything should start from a foundation of love and flow out. 1 John 4:19 says

“We love because He first loved us.”

Again that love isn’t a debt. It is a response. He has shown me what love is and I can’t help but love Him back. I can’t help but do good. I can’t help but want to be a better person. His love motivates me.

The beautiful thing about life is that it’s a process. God doesn’t expect us to go from sinner to saint overnight. God knows this Christian life is a day by day journey. 2 Corinthians 3:18 talks about us going from glory to glory or making us more and more like Him. It is a process. He reveals more of Himself to us as we’re ready and mature enough to handle it. If we realize that our actions towards God and others don’t flow from a place of love, then allow God to reveal why it’s not. When we seek Him He doesn’t turn us away. When we seek Him we find Him. When we ask, He will answer. (Matthew 7:7, Jeremiah 33:3)

So the next time God shows us or tells us “I love you.” we can confidently reply, “I love you too!” No ulterior motives. No hidden agendas. Just love.