To Live is Christ — wanting what God wants

I used to tell my children that if I didn’t love them, I would let them do as they pleased. Of course they couldn’t see past the discipline or restrictions to that reality. In their minds, love meant allowing them total freedom to make their own choices. Somewhere in there, I am sure they thought love also included protecting them from any negative consequences.

Am I like my children when it comes to the love of my Heavenly Father? Do I chaff under His discipline and assume He doesn’t love me when He restricts my freedom? Do I forget that the Bible says, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent” (Revelation 3:19)?

I remember talking to a teen who thought that God didn’t love people because Christians were “not allowed” to do things that she loved to do. Her notion of love was like that of a small child who simply wanted her own way.

Even though God disciplines His people, He does love everyone without any merit on our part. The Bible is clear about that as well. 

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6–8)

God’s love isn’t about granting permission, sin or otherwise. It is about sacrifice for sin and doing whatever it takes to free us from sin’s bondage. His love accepts me as I am, but He loves me too much to leave me that way.

The verse from Revelation calls the rebuked to repentance, not resentment. As He directs my path, sometimes with the rod of correction, I must remember that this is love and that I need to respond by wanting the same thing as He wants — freedom from the tyranny of always insisting on my own way.