Perfection Is Not a Prerequisite for Knowing GodSample

What God Cares About the Most

It’s not always easy going to God. We live in a physical world—a world of time and space, cause and effect, where bad behavior is met with bad consequences. Our world deals harshly with less than perfect. And because we expect harsh treatment whenever we’re exposed for who we truly are, we often expect harsh treatment from God too.

We reason that, because of our mistakes and our sins, God just must love us less, like us less. Our sin must make him want to be in relationship with us less.

So we tend to take a physical-world approach, a time-and-space approach. When we fail yet again, we tend to want to hide, to withdraw from God for a time. We avoid him until we feel better about ourselves, until enough time has passed since our last transgression, or until we’ve done some “good” things to offset our bad behavior.

Only then are we willing to go back.

But this creates relationships characterized by oscillation—by movement back and forth—by coming and going, coming and going. This approach is intuitive to our physical natures. It comes naturally. But here’s the problem: it cuts us off from God right when we need him most. It cuts us off from the source of forgiveness and healing and guidance right when we need them most.

No wonder we’re struggling with those same old sins.

God doesn’t act according to human justice or human fairness. He isn’t governed by any laws of the natural world. He does his own thing—and it “surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19). Unconditional, unchanging, unending love is just too hard for our human minds to imagine. It is radical. It is outrageous. It’s a sacred mystery.

And we’re going to have to start getting comfortable with that kind of mystery. Because we need his love and grace—even when we don’t feel like we deserve them. And we’re going to need to learn to meet his doesn’t-make-sense actions with a doesn’t-make-sense act of our own, which is simply to say … “Okay.”

We tend to think being a Christian—being a saint—is about how little we sin. It isn’t, not really. We think how much or how little we sin is what God cares about most. It’s not.

What God cares about most is that we show up. What he wants most is that we encounter him, experience him, get to know him. Because he trusts himself. When he sees us come out of hiding, he breathes a God-sized sigh of relief, because he knows the power of his love and grace and goodness in our lives.

He knows that when we’re with him, nothing can take us down—not sin, not our mistakes, not our selfishness. And may we know, with his help, how deeply he loves us, how eagerly he desires to be in relationship with us, and how great the adventure with him can be.

We hope you enjoyed this reading plan. Click here to learn more about Justin Camp and get his new book, Odyssey.