I Know God Loves Me, but Does He Like Me?

00:00:00.000 | A really good question today from a listener named Derek in Chicago.

00:00:07.480 | "Pastor John, I have been a Christian for about a decade and it has been a wonderful

00:00:11.320 | decade of growth and learning in Scripture.

00:00:14.400 | I feel close to God.

00:00:15.880 | I know God loves me and the shed blood of His Son proves it according to Romans 8.32.

00:00:22.360 | But the question I more often struggle with is this.

00:00:26.800 | Does God actually like me?

00:00:29.760 | Pastor John, what would you say to Derek?"

00:00:33.080 | This is not just Derek's question.

00:00:36.920 | Many ask the same thing.

00:00:38.600 | It often goes hand in hand with a family background in which there is no experience of being enjoyed.

00:00:49.200 | A father or mother or others who basically coexisted with us or tolerated us but rarely

00:00:56.520 | seemed to delight in us or want to be with us or take genuine, spontaneous pleasure in

00:01:03.960 | anything we did or said.

00:01:06.000 | In other words, there are a lot of people who, from their own experience, have no actual

00:01:12.040 | existential categories for grasping the fact of someone, anyone, God included, liking them

00:01:22.120 | or enjoying them or delighting in them.

00:01:26.080 | So it seems to me that what's needed for a person like that, and it may be most of us,

00:01:33.360 | what's needed is to discover an actual experience of being enjoyed by God and pleasing God and

00:01:41.720 | God smiling upon us and having pleasure in us.

00:01:46.060 | What's needed for that to happen is three things.

00:01:50.360 | One, a framework for understanding the love of God in its different dimensions.

00:01:57.160 | Two, a big bath of biblical text.

00:02:01.760 | Dive in, take a bath in the Bible about God's delighting in His people.

00:02:07.120 | And three, a specific outpouring of the Holy Spirit that I can't control and that Derek

00:02:14.120 | can't control, but God may be pleased to give through His Word in which the heart experiences

00:02:21.520 | this not just as a biblical truth, but as a personal reality.

00:02:26.320 | So those three things.

00:02:27.320 | Let me just say a word about each of those three things.

00:02:30.600 | First, here's the simple framework for understanding several dimensions of the love of God.

00:02:36.780 | There are at least two dimensions to God's love, and there are probably subcategories

00:02:42.200 | of those, but here are two.

00:02:44.640 | One has been called the love of benevolence.

00:02:48.440 | This would be God's goodwill—benevolence means goodwill toward people that don't deserve

00:02:56.600 | it.

00:02:57.600 | This is the kind of love that saved all of us who have any hope of making heaven.

00:03:04.080 | We got that hope because God looked upon us when we were not beautiful, not attractive,

00:03:10.200 | not pleasing.

00:03:11.640 | He saw lostness and hopelessness and rebelliousness and dirty character and undeserving merit,

00:03:20.040 | no merit, and He loved us with a love of benevolence that saved us from destruction when we were

00:03:28.820 | running full speed away from Him.

00:03:32.880 | That's the love of benevolence, and none of us would have a relationship with God without

00:03:38.520 | it.

00:03:39.520 | And then there is the love of delight or approval or being pleased or what Derek probably

00:03:47.920 | means by being liked.

00:03:50.100 | When God created the world, including human beings, and said, "It is very good.

00:03:55.840 | This is good," this was the love of delight.

00:03:59.880 | He saw what He had made, and He approved of it.

00:04:03.360 | He was pleased by it.

00:04:04.720 | He liked it.

00:04:07.000 | Yet when human beings, and that's all of us, fell into sin, God's human creation was

00:04:15.680 | marred, defaced, made ugly, displeasing, even though there is a remnant of natural wonder

00:04:25.840 | about the human person that distinguishes us from the animals, but we're so defaced

00:04:32.440 | and so debased that God finds us thoroughly unpleasing when it comes to a personal relationship.

00:04:42.280 | But here's the amazing thing.

00:04:44.640 | When God, by His love of benevolence, saves us and counts us righteous in Christ and gives

00:04:53.000 | us the Holy Spirit, He begins a work of transformation that restores aspects of our personhood which

00:05:03.680 | are delightful to Him, pleasing to Him, which He genuinely likes about us.

00:05:12.000 | This is what God is doing in sanctification.

00:05:14.700 | You might say sanctification is God making us likable, pleasing.

00:05:21.160 | So that's the first thing of the three that I mentioned.

00:05:24.080 | Number two, now let's turn and take a bath.

00:05:27.640 | But before the bath, here's a Bible text that describes this decisive turn from being unable

00:05:37.000 | to please God, be liked by God, and able to be liked by God.

00:05:42.800 | And it's Romans 8, 7 through 9.

00:05:46.120 | It goes like this, "The mind that is set on the flesh," that's who we were, the mind of

00:05:51.760 | the flesh, before we were born again.

00:05:54.680 | "The mind of the flesh is hostile to God.

00:05:58.720 | It does not submit to God's law.

00:06:00.880 | Indeed, it cannot, and those who are in the flesh," here it is, "cannot please God."

00:06:06.800 | So this is our hopeless condition.

00:06:10.780 | We were in an absolutely hopeless state apart from salvation.

00:06:17.460 | We never pleased God.

00:06:19.720 | He never liked what we did because everything we did was not from faith.

00:06:26.080 | It was rooted in pride and rooted in selfishness and rooted in vainglory and seeking our own

00:06:32.360 | and ignoring Him, and that didn't please Him at all.

00:06:36.380 | But here's the amazing transition.

00:06:38.240 | The verse picks up like this, "But you, however, are not in the flesh."

00:06:45.300 | So he just said, "In the flesh you cannot please God, but you, however, are not in the

00:06:52.380 | flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you."

00:06:57.020 | In other words, you were without the Spirit and could not please God.

00:07:01.380 | Now you have the Spirit, and by implication you do please God.

00:07:06.100 | God does not give us His Spirit in vain, and the Spirit does not produce unlikable fruit.

00:07:15.580 | God delights in, is pleased by, what we are becoming in the power of the Holy Spirit.

00:07:23.940 | And I know this is hard to believe and hard to feel for many people because our experience

00:07:29.460 | is that if there's any part of our lives that is imperfect, that's what others are going

00:07:35.120 | to pick up on and complain about.

00:07:36.940 | They're not going to spot anything good and like us for it.

00:07:41.260 | They're going to spot what we haven't yet accomplished for goodness, and they're going

00:07:45.580 | to be displeased by it, and that's especially true of God, people feel.

00:07:51.960 | We can never really be liked, only tolerated, because the focus is always on our shortcomings

00:07:58.860 | rather than our little successes.

00:08:01.260 | But I want to say loud and clear, God is not like that.

00:08:09.420 | Let me say it again.

00:08:11.020 | God is not like that.

00:08:13.960 | God sees the incremental advances of our transformation by the Spirit, His Spirit, and delights in

00:08:23.340 | them.

00:08:24.700 | God does not decide whom to like quantitatively.

00:08:29.820 | This is important.

00:08:30.820 | Listen carefully.

00:08:31.980 | He doesn't decide whom He's going to like quantitatively, as if when you get to 51%

00:08:38.660 | goodness, He'll like you.

00:08:41.740 | Finally, when you are at 49%, He doesn't like you.

00:08:48.260 | What God sees in us is not quantity, but real Holy Spirit-produced fruit.

00:09:00.540 | Even of these little evidences of new, real, spiritual, regenerate life are a great delight

00:09:10.780 | to Him.

00:09:12.200 | They are a real good, even if mixed with sinful attitudes.

00:09:17.600 | How could they not be His pleasure?

00:09:19.980 | They are His work.

00:09:20.980 | I mean, how demeaning can it be to say to the work of the Holy Spirit, "God doesn't

00:09:27.980 | like it"?

00:09:28.980 | That's awful for people to say that.

00:09:31.380 | So here's the bath.

00:09:33.660 | Psalm 3527, "Great is the Lord who delights in the welfare of His servant."

00:09:38.820 | Jeremiah 3240, "I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in

00:09:45.560 | faithfulness with all my heart and all my soul."

00:09:48.740 | Zephaniah 317, "God will rejoice over you with gladness.

00:09:54.060 | He will quiet you by His love.

00:09:55.820 | He will exult over you with loud singing."

00:09:59.620 | Proverbs 1120, "Those of crooked heart are an abomination to the Lord, but those of blameless

00:10:06.260 | ways are His delight."

00:10:09.820 | Isaiah 624, "You shall be called, 'My delight is in her,' and your land married.

00:10:17.540 | For the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married."

00:10:21.740 | Psalm 147.10, "His delight is not in the strength of the horse or His pleasure in the legs of

00:10:30.140 | a man, but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His steadfast

00:10:38.620 | love."

00:10:39.620 | All you have to do is hope in God and tremble at His displeasure, and you are a delight

00:10:44.700 | to Him.

00:10:45.700 | Proverbs 311, "The Lord reproves whom He loves as a father the son in whom He delights."

00:10:52.580 | So even when we're being reproved, He calls us the son in whom He delights.

00:10:58.340 | One more, Psalm 149.4, "For the Lord takes pleasure in His people.

00:11:03.900 | He adorns the humble with salvation."

00:11:07.780 | And that Bible bath could go on and on.

00:11:11.460 | Just one last thing, number three, none of these glorious texts will make a difference

00:11:17.460 | in Derek's life without the upholding of the Holy Spirit in his heart to make this a personal

00:11:23.500 | experience.

00:11:25.260 | So he and we should pray earnestly that Romans 5:5 happen when I'm done here, or maybe it's

00:11:32.480 | happening right now, but we pray that it will.

00:11:35.460 | It says, "God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has

00:11:43.060 | been given to us."

00:11:44.980 | That's a real experience.

00:11:47.420 | When this happens, all those texts come alive as personal experiences, not just biblical

00:11:54.780 | truth.

00:11:55.780 | So I pray, Derek, I pray that for you and the rest of us who want to please God, want

00:12:03.700 | God to delight in us, be pleased with us, like what we are and what we do, I pray that

00:12:12.340 | God would pour out His Holy Spirit and make these texts real.

00:12:16.580 | Amen.

00:12:17.580 | That's quite a bath of biblical truth.

00:12:20.260 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:12:21.920 | And Derek, thanks for the excellent question.

00:12:24.520 | And speaking of truth baths, you can subscribe to our audio feed and search our episode archive

00:12:30.540 | and even reach us by email with a difficult question you might be facing in life.

00:12:33.940 | You can do all of that through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:12:40.580 | Well what does it mean for me to give my life to God?

00:12:45.300 | How do we give our lives to God?

00:12:47.260 | The phrase is fairly common today in Christian jargon.

00:12:50.900 | And on Wednesday, we will press in for a definition of the phrase according to scripture as we

00:12:56.420 | are called to give our lives to Him.

00:12:59.820 | Until then, I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:13:01.420 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:13:03.820 | We'll see you on Wednesday.

00:13:05.540 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

00:13:13.880 | you

I Know God Loves Me, but Does He Like Me?

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