What does God feel when I don’t? (Part 1)

Friendship is a journey of two hearts. What affects one heart affects the other. In my first blog post ‘Our Astonishing God and my Unastonished Heart’, I shared my battle with spiritual apathy and over-familiarity with God. True to the nature of friendship, my heart was not the only one affected. For God has a heart too. 

So how does my unaffected heart affect His? How does He feel when I no longer feel anything for Him? What does He think about me if stop thinking about Him?

Does He respond like I do? Because I tend to lose interest if you do. I ignore you if you ignore me.  Nor will I invest much in the friendship if the desire isn’t mutual. If you retreat, so do I. If I retreat first, I assume you will too. As I'm sure God would.

But would He? Does God lose interest in our friendship if I do? Is His love as fickle as mine? If I ignore, avoid or outright reject Him, will He close His heart like I do?  

I don’t ask this to make a point. It’s not theoretical for me. My fire still goes out. My heart’s fickle. Prone to wander. So I ask: Will my change in heart change His?

While my question isn’t theoretical, sometimes it feels like the answer is. For I know what Scripture says. God will always love me. Regardless. And I believe it.

Sorta. At least my head does. But my heart has its doubts. Feels too good to be true. Mercy comes free. But not easy. My ego fights it and my guilty conscience tells me I shouldn’t receive a gift I don’t deserve. Whether from God or people.

You can forgive me and tell me so. Yet I’m ‘sure’ you’re as disappointed in me as I am. Same with God. I tell myself He sees me as I do. Yet I seldom let Him speak  
for Himself or believe Him when He does. I hold to my opinion based on a guess.

But with friends, I don’t want to guess. It always backfires. It hurts people and ruins friendships. Either I assume you don’t care when in fact you do and always did.  Or I assume all is well between us when it’s not. Better to ask than guess. I want to know you for who you actually are. Not who I hope or assume you are.  

Still, it’s so easy to assume I know how you feel. About me and our relationship. Why does it matter? Because it’s just as easy to be wrong. Especially with God.

While sedated by apathy, I was oblivious to how my indifference affected God. So He told me. One day my reading plan took me to Jer. 2. Even in apathy, I still read the Bible. Though I didn’t expect Him to speak. But He did. My daily ritual suddenly felt very personal. As if I had stumbled on my friend’s private journal.  In which he opens up his wounded heart. Knowing I’m the one who wounded it.

Jeremiah 2 is a love letter. It broke my heart to read it. As it broke His to write it.

I tried to see Israel’s idolatry and apathy from God’s point of view. Instead I saw mine. It hurt to see how I’d lost my first love. Even more to see its effect on Him.  
God writes as a grieving husband who remembers the devoted love of his bride.

“I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me + followed me”. v. 2 “What fault did your ancestors find in me that they strayed so far from me? v. 5 “They did not ask, “Where is the Lord?” v. 6 “Does a bride forget her wedding dress? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number.” v. 32

God is grieving a loss. A loss of love. This isn’t self-pity, insecurity or feeling sorry for Himself. It’s a groom so in love with his bride that the loss of her love has left him inconsolable. A father who misses his child. Crying ‘I can’t bear to lose you!’
 
There are many ways to lose you. I lose you if you die. But also if you leave me. I lose you if you stay but your heart leaves. I lose you if you aren’t ‘with me’ when you’re with me. If I hear your words but not your heart, I lose you. If I feel your touch but never your love, I lose you. And since I love you, it hurts to lose you.   

The more I love you, the more loss hurts. God’s grief is deep because His love is.
 
Yet I rarely linger in a text if God is mad or sad. I can’t deal with those emotions.  I’ll sympathize with you. Yet with God, I can’t listen long. But don’t tell Him. I do understand why sin makes Him mad and sad. And I feel bad if I make Him either. Yet I think ‘Can we move on? Cuz if not, I’m moving on to a psalm. A happy one.’
 
Yet as much as I wanted to skip Jer. 2, I couldn’t. And I’m glad I didn’t. For what I saw in this love letter woke me out of my slumber. I saw my heart. Then I saw His.

I have asked God for years to show me His heart. Yet each time I ask, guess what He does? He shows me mine! What’s up with that? Don’t tell Him this either, but I don’t like it! Why must I see me? I see enough of me as it is. I want to see God!

The other reason I don’t like it is that He always shows me the me I actually am. I don’t like that view of me. I like the me I think I am or the me others think I am.

Jer. 2 showed me me. But why must I look at my heart when I want to see His?

Then I thought of Matt. 5:8. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God’. And I realized why He examines my heart so closely. And why He shows me me. It’s the same reason eye doctors examine eyes. It’s with ‘the eyes of my heart’ I see God. So He looks for what blurs my vision. Why? To remove it. So I can see!
It changed my prayer. ‘Purify my heart Lord. Do what it takes for me to see you.’ 

There’s another reason He shows me my heart before His. I can’t appreciate His mercy until I see the depth of my sin. My pride leaves me in awe of His humility.  The reason I'm stunned by His desire for me is that I know my indifference to Him.

God’s deep devotion to us is most beautiful when seen against the backdrop of our lack of devotion to Him. Like a rose among thorns. A cardinal on a snowbank.

His grief over the distance between us says He cares about ‘us’ far more than I.  

If you lose interest or pull away, I tend to do the same. I give up if you do. Why? Because deep down I’m not sure I’m worth fighting for. So if you leave, I ‘get it’. 
Once I read your diary of how I broke your heart, I grieve. But why don’t I run to you, pour out my regret and ask for mercy? Because of a lie that says ‘I deserve rejection. You should give up on me’. So I yield to the lie and leave before you do.

I do this to God. It’s my default response when I see my sin. But He won’t let go. Even when I do. After showing me my heart in Jer 2, He showed me His in Jer 3. 

I myself said “How gladly would I treat you like my children and
give you a pleasant land, the most beautiful inheritance of any nation’.  
Jeremiah 3:19a

Can you hear His heart? Feel His love? It’s because He’s a Father! In saying this, I’m not trying to make God like us. Rather, He is the one who made us like Him. And our shared similarities can help us understand Him better. Why create us as dependent children who become parents ourselves? Not only to give us the joy of parenting. But so we can understand His heart. What He’s like. How He feels.

Want to know what God feels like when He sees you? Think of your own child. Yes, the feeling of love can dissipate in the heat of their defiance or your stress. 
But you can’t deny the deep unforced love that can flood your heart for a child. 

Especially when it’s yours. You see the beauty inside them that others can’t see.  You see potential others don’t. You find delight in all they do and in all they are.  
Even as they break your heart. Ask any mother. Wounded hearts still bleed love.

Is the one who made us like this less loving than we are? Has He really stopped loving me because I stop loving Him? I don’t think so. Why? Listen to what else God says in v. 19. It’s His response to His children after they stopped loving Him.

I thought you would call me ‘Father’ and not turn away from following me.
Jeremiah 3:19

You can feel His heart in His words. It’s breaking. His own child doesn’t love Him.
Ever want your child to love you back but they don’t? Not an easy feeling to live with. Much less love with. It’s hard to not respond likewise. By not responding.

Yet His love is a love that keeps loving even when I give Him every reason not to. Mercy was my wake-up call to stir me from the deep slumber of over-familiarity.
I started caring again because He wouldn’t stop caring. For a child who didn’t care!

Seeing the love in His heart is what woke up mine. Seeing how He feels when I didn’t feel much for Him served to shock my heart awake. I began feeling again.  

Refection Question:
Do you ever pull away from God because you think He's pulled away from you?

NEXT POST:  What does God feel when I don't?  (Part 2)
Other ways God is using Jeremiah to wake up my emotions by showing me His.