God Feels What You Feel

"Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not."

Lamentations 3:22 (NKJV)

As a small child, I had a picture of God in my mind that I suspect many children share: a distant, elderly figure, somewhere far above, vaguely benevolent but not really involved in the specifics of my day. The kind of God who existed in general but not in particular.

Then I started reading the Bible seriously, and that picture was shattered completely.

The God of Scripture is not a vague force or an impersonal first cause. He is a person. He thinks. He speaks. He communicates. He loves. He grieves. He becomes angry. He rejoices. He is described throughout the Old Testament with a range of emotional vocabulary that is frankly startling in its richness. And Jesus, who is the exact representation of the Father's nature, wept at a graveside, felt compassion for hungry crowds, was moved with indignation at injustice, and expressed the deepest possible love for the people around Him.

Because God is a person, He feels what we feel. Not abstractly, not from a distance, but genuinely. And because the Son of God took on human flesh and lived a complete human life, He understands our experience from the inside. Hebrews 4:15 is one of the most comforting verses in the entire Bible: we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathise with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet without sin.

This means that whatever you are going through today, you are not going through it unaccompanied. Not by a distant well-wisher, not by a sympathetic observer, but by One who understands it from His own experience. The loneliness, the physical pain, the grief, the rejection, the confusion: He knows them all.

You can bring anything to God in prayer. Not just the spiritual items on a list. Anything. Because He is not an impersonal force waiting for properly formatted requests. He is a Father who genuinely, personally, deeply cares.

His compassion fails not. They are new every morning. That is not a religious cliché. It is a description of who God actually is.

Prayer: Lord, thank You that You are not distant or indifferent. You feel what I feel. You understand what I am going through. I bring to You today everything I have been carrying, trusting that Your compassion is as fresh as this morning. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Pastor Ras
All Nations Community Church

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