Why Does God Care?

Verse: Ephesians 5:3-7
3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.

Thoughts
Why does God care what we do? Have you ever thought about that? Why does God make some sexual stuff immoral and others not? Why are some things impure and others not? Why does he care about how we handle our money? Why does he care how we talk?

Is he just someone who wants to create these rules for us that are impossible to follow and then punish us when we don’t?

This is obviously a way deeper discussion than we can have here, but here’s one thought for you this morning. What if God is lovingly describing the way things are? It’s not so much about rules as it is about telling us the way things work. It’s like him writing:

• Don’t walk around with your eyes closed, you’ll run into stuff and get hurt.
• Don’t drink dirty water, it will make you sick.
• Don’t stick your hand in fire, you’ll get burned.
• Don’t jump off of high buildings, you’ll die.

No one would read those and think, “God is such a mean, arbitrary rule maker!” No, it just makes sense. The problem is, when we read God’s word, we often forget that God is God, and we aren’t. When he says, “avoid sexual immorality” rather than trusting that he knows how the world works better than we do, we question him! We want to take his words and fit them into our worldview, rather than the other way around. We attempt to make God into our image, instead of letting him make us into his.

There is no condemnation in this of course. God is so full of love and patience. But it’s important for us to see that all of God’s Word is meant to lead us to life, not to keep us from it.

The invitation today (and everyday) is for us to listen to the gentle leading of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit showing us “this is the way.” Love like this. Share like this. Speak like this. And you will find God’s love and life flowing through you.

Prayer
Thank you that you love me enough to show me the way to life and love. I invite your gentle leadership into my life today. I want to follow you with all my heart.

Author: Christian Dunn