Mental Health: A Cause to Live For (part 3 of 4)
Understanding God's big picture answers the question I hypothesized that Satan has raised concerning God's worthiness of our praise. (If you missed our two prior eGraces explaining this, then click the link above for the eGrace archives.) But a second question yet remains: Did God create man merely to prove His worthiness to be God? Never! To do so would be exploitation, which is contrary to His identity.
Exploit: (v) “To use unfairly for one's own purposes,” Webster.
The Bible indicates there are some things that God cannot do. God cannot lie; God cannot back out on His promises; God cannot force people to love Him, etc. “God is agape” (1 John 4:8) and by definition, doing any non-agape thing is out of character for Him. Agape is the Greek word that New Testament scholars have translated as “love”. Yet it's meaning is far more profound than the way we often define love. The Greeks had several different words for “love.” Agape means “I will do the most altruistic, redeeming, constructive thing for you.” God cannot agape us and exploit us at the same time! That's impossible.
Learning of His worthiness to be God and praising Him during our time on earth accrues to our eternal benefit. Those who reject Jesus will be intimidated to learn of His worthiness by being slam-dunked by God's awesome presence! “Every knee shall bow” due to His overwhelming Persona. This will flatten them like it prostrated rebellious Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road (Acts 9:3-4). God could reveal Himself to you like that right now, causing you to pay Him the respect and homage He deserves, but this is not in keeping with His plan to woo us to Himself as free moral agents.
Jay Kesler teaches, God could awaken us each day with fiery-red skywriting, “REPENT!” But this would intimidate us into submission, not woo us by His grace and loveliness. This would not prove His worthiness, but open the door to view Him as a tyrant.
Thus, God patiently waits. Even by waiting His amazing patience and tolerance of man's abuse of His good name (reputation) validates His worthiness to merit man's love. Ever wonder why He tolerates the indignation of hearing His and His Son's Names used as profane expletives? It validates His worthiness to be loved.
Do you realize that today's “politically correct” god is “tolerance”? The only god who is not tolerated is the True, Living God! Is it coincidental that neither Buddha's name nor Allah's name are insulted or used as expletives? No! Satan targets only the true God and His Son. How incredibly patient and worthy of all praise is God!
Worthy of all praise is the Living God, 24/7! By faith, we can submit to God's authority, worship and freely praise Him, proving Satan is wrong! This is a cause worth living for, worth dying for; a cause that yields mental health.