Hello, this is Pat Schatzline with Remnant Ministries International. Welcome to God Today. Have you ever felt that God was mad at you? You know I spent most of my life wondering, God do you like me? And, I will never forget, when God began to speak to me and He said, “I am not mad at you, I’m mad about you!”
I wonder how many people, because of their lives or culture, because of scars, because of the things they’ve been through, they wonder if God is mad at them. Can I just say something to you? God’s not mad at you, He’s mad about you. In fact, Romans 8 says, “Nothing can separate you from His love.” The Bible says in Romans 2 that it’s God’s goodness that draws us back to Him.
Here’s what I want you to begin to help you understand. If God was mad at us there are certain stories that wouldn’t even be in the Bible. The story in John 8, the woman caught in adultery, remember what happened, they wanted to stone her and Jesus walks up, kneels down and starts writing out, I think He was writing out the Pharisee’s sins. Next thing you know, He says, “Woman, where are your accusers?” She said, “They are gone.” And He said, “Then neither do I accuse, go and sin no more.”
There are stories in the Bible that would not be in there if God was mad at us. My favorite is what I call ‘the Lost Chapter’. It’s found in Luke 15. You get the lost son, the lost coin, the lost sheep. The coin got lost because somebody mishandled it., the lost sheep got lost because it wandered off, but then you got the lost son.
He got lost because he made bad mistakes. That is the anatomy of loss. But the Bible says, when he was a long way off, his dad takes off running, his dad takes off running towards him. He looks up, and a lot of people don’t understand why the dad ran because in the Jewish culture there is a thing called the Kezazah. What is the Kezazah? That if you go and waste your inheritance in front of the Gentiles while your dad is still alive, you are cut off, you are a slave. And whenever you come home, the only way you could come home is as a slave.
And the Bible says he is on his way home, he is tired of living in pig slop and the dad takes off running. You know why the dad ran? He was outrunning the village, because the village was going to come and say, “You’re cut off from this point on.” So you know what the dad was doing, He outran the village. That’s why it says that when he was a long way off, his dad takes off running, tackles his son, kisses him and then gets him dressed. You know why he did that, he was outrunning the accusers. The village wanted to cut him off, but dad was saying, “My boy is home!”
No matter what you have done, you need to understand that God is not mad at you, He’s mad about you. No matter how many mistakes you’ve made, it’s His goodness that will bring you back. You just have to say, God, change me, restore me, use me. Let’s pray together, right now, because He’s not mad at you, He’s mad about you. In fact, He’s proud of you and He’s going to do a work in you right now.
Father, I pray that in Jesus Name, everybody watching, as they are beginning their day, will feel the love of God overwhelm them, that will begin to wash them, change them and restore them and do amazing works inside of them. Let this be a day when we feel the love of God. Tackle us and kiss us, like you did the Prodigal Son. Thank You, Lord, for loving us, for not being mad at us, for calling us Your children, in Jesus Name, Amen. God bless.