Does God Like You?

I was riding back from our Easter Weekend with Jacki’s family yesterday and the girls wanted to pop in an Adventure in Odyssey. If you haven’t heard of it, it is an audio series that tells stories to teach lessons (often to children). Anyway, both Jacki and her younger sister had fallen asleep so I was left listening to the story playing and one of the characters asked a question to their dad which I thought was a pretty good one. He was facing some trouble in school and was trying to find out what he needed to change to be liked more. When his dad told him that the opinion that mattered most to him was God’s, the son asked him,

Does God like me?

That question hit the sweet spot. My relationship with Christ started out with a deeeeeeeeep desire to please him and a feeling like I never could. I was constantly failing. Constantly letting him down. It was a part of who I was. I had flaws that kept tripping me up and personality traits that I was working so hard to change. If I was asked that question back then, I would have had a hard time answering it. I knew God loved me, but I didn’t know how he could like me. What was there to like anyway? I mean, if the whole point of being a disciple of Christ was “I must decrease so that he may increase” like we so often quote as Christians, then there must be something about the person that I am that God doesn’t like. Why else would he need to eradicate that in order for Christ to increase in me? I hear Christians say, “God wants to do something through me, I just gotta get myself out of the way before he can do it.” We approach ministry with the intention of showing people that God loves them. I think an equally important issue to address is the need to be liked. But can we really answer that question for people? What do you think?

Does God like you? Why?