Episode #353 Step Into His Compassion – How to Bring Your Feelings to God

Hey, friend. We've been in this series sharing our emotions with the Lord and bringing our whole selves to him as a way to grow our relationship and experience more life with him, no matter what we're going through. And today we're taking a little bit of a different spin on that theme. We're stepping into God's feelings toward us. I am gonna read for us from Isaiah 30, starting with verse 18. It says:

“Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you. Therefore, he will rise up to show you compassion.”

This is how God feels toward you. Compassion. He has loving kindness. He has empathy that is moved to action. He cares for you. He cares for what you're going through, and he longs to be gracious to you. But I know there's some of us who are thinking right now, “Yeah, that might be true for other people, but not me or not in this mess. I've messed up too far. God wouldn't have compassion for me about this. I keep struggling with the same area, or I've been here before and I know better. Or this isn't big enough to even warrant God's compassion. I should just get over it.”

Well, the good news I have for us is in Isaiah 30, before we get to verse 18, it describes God's people making really bad choices. There's all of these opportunities that God is giving his people to respond rightly to him, and they keep rejecting his message.

Verses 15 and 16, it says,

 “In repentance and rest is your salvation,
    in quietness and trust is your strength,
    but you would have none of it.

You said, ‘No, we will flee on horses.’
    Therefore you will flee!
You said, ‘We will ride off on swift horses.’
    Therefore your pursuers will be swift!”

And then we get down to verse 18.

“Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you. Therefore he will rise up and show you compassion.”

See God's people, including us, have a tendency to depend on our own strength, on our own abilities, on the problem solving we can do on our own. “I'm okay, God, I have fast horses.” And he's like, “I'm offering you my way. I'm offering to be your strength. I'm saying, Hey, come receive strength and salvation. Think again, choose differently. Receive rest. But you would have none of it.”

 And in our humanity, we can think that God would be like us and he would just give up. He'd wash his hands of us and move on. But that is not what he is like. Even when we make choices like that, even if you find yourself in a tough circumstance today, in a messy situation at work, in a broken relationship with someone that you love, or just simply sapped of strength and energy because of your own choices, God says, “I long to be gracious to you. I will rise up to show you compassion.”

 And so my encouragement, my pleading, if I could plead with you today, it's to step into the feelings that God has for you. Believe him when he says that he has loving compassion for you. Believe him when he says he longs to be gracious to you because he does. No matter what you're going through, God can meet you in it with grace and compassion. You don't have to depend on yourself. You can trust him. He's powerful and reliable.

God's compassion is not fickle. The way he feels isn't the way a human feels where it ebbs and flows and changes one moment to the next. God is steadfast and trustworthy. You can rely on his grace and compassion for you.

And so I invite you press into this conversation with him. And so here's a question I invite you to take to God today:

God, what's something you want me to know about your compassion for me?

Don't just take what I've talked about as the answer to the question. Sit with it. Quietly linger. Ask God what he would prompt in your heart and mind. What he would show you?

God, what do you want me to know about your compassion for me?

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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