If God Is Moody, You're In Trouble

Is God moody?  Can you put Him in a generous mood or make Him stingy?  Can you do something to move Him close, or something to move Him away?  Can you do something to get into His presence, or do something to get out of it?  Is He fickle? Does He leave you?

The Christians at Corinth wondered about those things and they had good reason.  Their behavior was awful—headline news. Epic.  While Corinth was well known as a city where people took cruel advantage of each other, non-Christians were especially repulsed by the behavior of some who called themselves believers.  Many in the church knew they were a mess, so it caused them a lot of stress concerning the security of their relationship with God.  The Christians at Corinth had to have been worry warts.

Naturally, they were aware that their spiritual daddy, the apostle Paul, knew all about their sloppiness and ugly failures, and they were afraid that he wouldn’t come to be with them because they were so often so bad.  “Will Paul,” they might have asked, “who loves us so deeply, draw away from us to punish us or as a way of teaching us a lesson?  Will he go somewhere else, to people who are better than us?  Why would he want to come here?”

Knowing their fears, Paul wrote a second letter to the worried Corinthians, and said essentially this:

“Are you kidding? I brag about you!  Every time I think of you, even just a little bit, God fills me with love for you!  How can I help but want to be with you in the same way that He does? I’m crazy about you!  Did I not make that clear in my first letter? I know it’s been awhile since I’ve visited; it simply hasn’t been the right time.  But my heart for you is exactly like God’s heart—everything is ‘Yes’ with Him!  Remember what He says?  Yes, I will always be with you.  Yes, I have given you all things.  Yes, I have secured you in Christ for always.  And, Yes, my love and grace for you is unchanged—it is and will always be “Yes!”  Can I get a Corinthian ‘Amen’?”  (See 2 Corinthians 1:12-2:11)

Paul did what many of you do:  he answered their questions and vanquished their fears by describing what he knew and how he felt from having God’s love for them.

The Corinthian Christians were the perfect people by which to make the point:  no matter how things look, no matter how we look, God’s affection and grace are never at risk, never threatened.  In fact, they are even more in view.  That’s the perfect relationship God has given to us already.  You don’t have to go get it.  You don’t have to earn it.  You don’t have to work on it.  It has been given to you.  It’s His gift—yours to enjoy.

God has plenty of motivation to be with us and to do for us; He doesn’t need more.  He doesn’t run out of motivation or have a shortage one day, and He doesn’t need convincing.  You’ll never need to woo God, and you’ll never need to do anything right in order to attract Him to you.  There’s no class on successful flirting with God!  He’s the One who loves and behaves perfectly—remember?  Believing that slips away sometimes, I know, but that’s the gospel that the devil keeps trying to move you and me away from.  So if you’ve wandered, as I sometimes do, wander back.

You and God are tight and secure.  You’re together! He made it happen.  And He will never be moody with you.  He’s not like that.  I can tell you.

(This is taken from a March 2013 video, “If God Is Moody, You’re In Trouble,” and is for those who might rather read than watch.  If you’d like to see the video and/or subscribe to them, click http://youtu.be/v4WTvaRtTJw.)