Let’s consider initially if it’s possible for our God to hurt. God made us in His
image and likeness. We were made to have a body, soul, and spirit. We have
a soul which inhabits our will, mind, and emotions. And our God is so all
powerful until He is not fearful of our reflecting His traits. The truth that God
hurts when we hurt, found full expression when it was revealed in the person
of Jesus Christ. In Christ the immense love that hurt God is shown. Christ is
God in the flesh – even the Son of God. This is a mystery, not a contradiction.
God was, in Christ, connecting Himself to us. Christ is the same nature of
God’s Being. Divinity and humanity belong to Him. And the full resource of
the Spirit is made available to man in His justice and compassion, begetting
and being begotten, giving and receiving. Because of Christ, we are sons and
daughters reserved unto salvation who by regeneration and new life receive
the life of God. Because of sin, moral purity alone is not enough to connect
us to the nature and life of God. He had to be like us. In this one unique body,
we can be like Christ and one with the Father. In perfect love condescension,
the Holy Ghost came upon the chosen vessel and the power of the Highest
overshadowed her. This is when love hurt God…when man rejects this union
to be reborn by hearing the Word of God and receiving the Spirit of God, we
reject the Creator. I almost shudder to write this. Praying that the reader
reasons with God’s word to come to the truth of knowing that as Jesus was,
so are we in this world. We are a new kind of people. Born from God’s
spiritual DNA, united to human flesh. Why should we tolerate sinful thoughts
and actions. In our lives we are to reveal God’s heart. It was determined that
God had always hurt when His people hurt. But He did so in a real, tangible
manner through the Incarnation - through the event that began in Bethlehem.
II Corinthians 4:6
Every aspect of God will eternally prove to be the most holiest fascination,
that could ever be known or realized. And two of these aspects are His love
and His hurt. Love caused God to do the only thing that could both vindicate
His character and make a way for our salvation. He delivered up His Son to
suffer and die. Redemptive suffering is the most beautiful and perfect love.
Answering our cries for mercy, and saving our souls after we’ve been
enlightened, cause God more suffering in that each sin places His Son on the
cross again. Love hurt God to hear His Son cry “my God, my God, why have
you forsaken me”. Love hurt God in that He foreknew by watching a daughter
or a son, self-sabotage through disobedience every caring opportunity, every
pursuit of the Holy Spirit, every warning offered in the word of God. Love
hurts God as He watches us go through a painful situation, that’s for our
ultimate good. God loves us to the height of heaven and the depth of the
sea. We might ought to reason with what’s happening to us, in light of how
deeply God cares. He desires our conformity more than our comfort.
Truth reveals to us the certainty from which we can draw great strength in
the knowledge that God is suffering with us. He hurts when we hurt. God with
us is the name of His Son. Love hurt God as He showed us His heart through
all of the humiliation and abuse endured by His Son. Love hurt God in that
His is an unrelenting concern for our well-being, knowing the cause of the
untold grief and pain in this broken world. God does not love us because He
hurts, He hurts because He loves us. He hurts because He is love. It's His
character, His nature, and God suffers in His love for us. God’s unrelenting,
self-sacrificing, unrequited, hurting love for us… To know we are loved like
this, despite our failings, our weaknesses, should change us. To know we
are loved like this, by the God of the universe, should give us confidence and
strength and purpose in this world like nothing else. When we sin against
Him. When we resist Him, reject Him, rebel against Him, when we don’t
believe in Him, when we turn our backs on Him, when we choose
godlessness instead of godliness, when we break His commandments, and
when we love, worship, and serve ourselves instead of loving, worshiping,
and serving the Lord – His heart grieves. But God counts the joy of our
salvation worth the hurt. We will know both the joy and the hurt of this love
in the soon coming days, when we are asked to lay down our lives for our
friends.
We are to reason with truth to where we see God the Creator having such
great hurt in His heart, because of how the whole of mankind has gotten
perverted. And as God, even the Holy Ghost is grieved by our sinful attitudes.
In that love is so powerful, and love is mandatory, it will collide with much hurt
because we are called to be in the world, but not of the world, and the world
today is filled with sin. God so loved the world and we are to love the people,
but Jesus tells us that the world hated him first, and the world will hate us
because we have been chosen out of the world. There are two things in this
world that effect every relationship – love in a relationship and hurt of a
relationship. That relationship could be one of marriage, common siblings,
friendship, or spiritual community. Even God is not immune from hurt. And
we know that it is true that God is love. It hurt God when He told Samuel that
we rejected Him. When we fail to come to God to reason as He asks, we
break the relationship, and we lose out on the truth that love wanted us to
know. The truer the love, the more excruciating the hurt. The same mouth
that prayed with you may one day rebel against you. Yet, God’s people learn
through reasoning that as love hurt God, the only thing that is more powerful
than hurt is love. When we are hurt, the best weapon or remedy to use is,
love. If we use any other weapon we will lose. Any other remedy, we will not
heal. What advantage are we given in reasoning with God? We come to
understand the difference between weakness and wickedness. Our loved
ones may suffer the weakness of wisdom because they reason not with truth.
Wickedness only results from rejection of truth. Christ was a victim of both
weakness and wickedness and still his love bade forgive them. It was this
love for His people that hurt God. It was this love meant for our good, not our
hurt. Let us love as does God. In every hurt endured for Christ there is a
blessing to bring us to a deeper reconciliation with God. Love is a heavenly
act done in an earthly creation. And sin entered that love and hurt God,
because God did not create us for this kind of world. Thank God that blood
memory endures, that we might reason the shedding of Christ’s blood in the
Garden, that wrought remission of sin. But praise God for the breath of His
spirit, that we have always with us that which remains of the image that
formed us, that the spiritual memory that comes from above is the higher
attainment of the great lovingkindness that draws us.
Love hurt God and love will hurt us, because neither God nor we will abandon
our love for people. God designed love to be eternal. And love will last
beyond those who choose to abandon God. Love hurt because it cares about
what God cares about. God hates sin. Therefore, love hates sin. It’s hard to
see those we care about affected by evil. Jesus cried when his friend Lazarus
died. He knew he would soon resurrect Lazarus in a short while. So why cry?
Jesus cried because of the effects of sin on his friend. Who among us have
not cried for similar reasons? God uses all things for our good. God uses sin
to give greater power to love. Any of us who claim to hold real love for another
has no choice but to see them the way God sees them. In this sense, love
serves as the great connector between God and man. Hurt, like love, unites
us. Thank God that love can bear hurt. Christ loved on the cross by
experiencing deep hurt for us. His love endured to the point of death, and
three days later he loved through death itself. God does not offer a hurt-free
life. But He does offer a love-filled life in Christ. God kept love on this earth
because He knew He was not finished with us. Love is the speech of Heaven.
And there, that language will have no words in its vocabulary to describe
hurt. There will no longer be a need.
Love existed without sin. Love existed without hurt. Love still exists, but there
is sickness, infidelity, abuse, scorn, anguish, as we lower loved ones into a
grave…the world is cruel. The sufferings God sends come not from hate, but
from love. They do not express God's condemnation, but His consecration.
Love hurting God is not altogether a bad thing. Hurt brings trouble, trials that
create a catalyst for discussion, for reasoning, that leads to revealed truth
that expresses greater faith in God’s plan. Love hurt God does not mean
there is something wrong with His love. The wrong is with us — our sin. God
must root out our sin, and that is hurtful for us to take. That hurts God as He
is perfecting His love in us. Think about the messages to the churches,
especially Laodicea. Jesus expresses disgust towards those in Laodicea,
declaring that he is on the verge of vomiting them out of his mouth. Yet, he
affirms his love for them! May I boldly suggest that it is precisely because he
loves his people, that he refuses to tolerate their lukewarm indifference
toward spiritual matters? In other words, the harsh words, the firm discipline
evoked by their backslidden behavior, together with his strong counsel, are
all motivated by our Lord’s love for his own. This is the nature of divine
discipline. Living for Jesus holds forth the potential for much hurt. Love hurt
God when we fail to love Him for all He is doing to save us. If you have a
child, have you ever had to put correction upon him or her? Do you love ‘em?
Did it hurt? Love can hurt, can’t it? But you are saving a soul. The measure
of true love is the pursuit of righteousness. God is passionately committed to
making us holy. There is no love in providing comfort to someone in sin…love
hurt God. Jesus is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. When our Father
has to perform spiritual surgery to excise the tumor of sin and rebellion and
unbelief, it hurts, it’s confusing, it’s inconvenient, but above all else, it’s
loving. Love hurt God as His Son hung on that cross. Laodiceans have a
hard lesson to learn. Will they grasp truth and repent?
The natural mind does not understand God’s doing whatever is necessary to
draw us to Himself. Amos chapter 4 - God withheld food to make His people
hungry. He stopped the rain to make them thirsty. He corrupted the fields to
ruin their harvest. Most devastating of all, He even killed their loved ones. He
withheld food, “yet you did not return to me.” He withheld water, “yet you did
not return to me.” He ruined the fields, “yet you did not return to me.” He even
killed their loved ones, “yet you did not return to me.” God’s purpose was not
destruction, but reconciliation. His motivation was not revenge, but
compassion. He wasn’t wielding His power and justice mainly as
punishment, but as invitation. In every ounce of suffering, He calls to His
people, come back to Me. God is willing to withhold anything to bring His
people home to Himself. Again and again, the hurt He allows is designed to
lead us to comfort and hope and healing, not despair. Love hurt God to hurt
us. The hurt may feel like God’s fierce anger in the moment, but it actually
serves to reveal His warm compassion toward us.
Isaiah 55:7
Joel 2:12, 13
Hosea 6:1
Love hurt God, but in His love we will come to a deeper, more durable joy in
our sorrow and suffering. When we begin to see all that God does for us
through adversity whereby which He loves us, we not only learn to tolerate
our weaknesses and afflictions, we boast all the more gladly in them. In the
end, the sweetest gift God gives us when He wounds us, is that He gives us
more of Himself. When we return to God, we get God. It is this love that hurt
God to do unto us what He must do because He loves us. This love hurt God
because He knows that we will either choose to meet Him one day as a
precious son or daughter. But if we refuse, we will meet Him as an enemy,
and our suffering will be far worse. Love hurt God when we wound His love
through rejection.
Love hurt God in that it made Him vulnerable to our circumstance. Love hurt
God because His heart had to be wrung and deeply broken when His Son
had to die for our sin. Love hurt God because every soul lost to Him is lost
at such great cost. It hurt Christ, but he kept on loving, even at the cost of
His life. Love hurt God when we take not the opportunity to be for Him in every way as He is for us.
Jeremiah 8:18-22
As believers, we must realize that having offered our hearts to God and made
the decision to follow Him, doesn’t exempt the love He has for us from hurting
God. Yes, we have pleased Him by surrendering our lives to Him, but there
are times we go against what He wants us to do. There are times we neglect
to reason with Him and allow the word to lift us to the higher understanding.
There are times we forget how He teaches knowledge and go seeking
solutions elsewhere. Love hurt God when we fail to hear the word of God.
The things that hurt God, hurt those who desire to know Him as well. When
love hurt God, it reveals to us the challenge and call for God's wisdom to be
understood in the things which bring grief to God's heart. We are to be
preparing for passionate engagement in the great commission as followers
of Christ, so that we can intercede for the very things that are causing hurt
deep within Jesus’ grace-filled heart.
The life of Jesus describes to us what it is like when God is close to God’s
people, and how much God desires to be close to us. And God loves us even
when we turn from Him. That is God. God loves so deeply that it hurts. God
remembers His promises and His covenants. The servants of God hurt
because of disobedience. They are chastened for their sin; as it is written,
“You only have I known of all the people of the earth; therefore I will punish
you for your iniquities.” Sin in a child of God cannot go unchastened. The rod
of chastisement is included in the covenant; and if we are in the covenant,
the Lord will keep His promise. “If His children forsake my law, and walk not
in my judgments, then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their
iniquity with stripes.” Oh, the abundant compassion of our God, that as soon
as ever these people, smarting under the result of their sin, began to cry to
Him, “He regarded their affliction when He heard their cry". Love hurt God,
yet he is tender and full of compassion. There is something very powerful
about the cry of a child to its own parent; and God, the tenderest of all fathers,
cannot bear to hear His children cry.
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