The Real Love Of God

I want to tell you what I've learned about the real love of God by sharing a story that happened to me.

When I was a teenager at Bible Temple, I remember going to a Generation Gathering with my youth group. Bob McGregor had gone on the "mean streets" of downtown Portland and interviewed many young people about their view of God.

He had us watch a video. There were these kids with spiked hair, earrings in odd places talking about God being a ball of energy or God being like a friendly alien and other ideas of God. At the time, it was pretty amusing and the whole youth group was hysterical....even through the last part, which was an explanation of God's love and acceptance of all of us and how to be saved.

Then Bob McGregor got up and he was very angry.

Here is what he said, and I'll never forget it:

"I am completely ashamed of you. I invited those kids here to learn about the acceptance of God, His love for them and what He did for them. I hope none of them showed up."

See, they were the outcasts of the church, the sinners like me that God came to save. I was horrified but my Bible Temple friends just blew it off like it was no big deal.

Then, my dad left my mom. I was no longer church elite. I was an outcast like them. I was on the other end now. My righteous friends wouldn't talk to me. They were ashamed to be seen with a kid of divorced parents.My mom left town with us, in shame.

And you know what I discovered? The most friendly people who showed the most love to me were the outcasts like me. They wore punk hair, dog collars...or their parents were divorced... people that I know Bible Temple youth would have been ashamed to be seen with.

So, I don't hate the institutional church. And I do cherish very special memories. But I do think that they will never show God's love to those who need it most until they step off their church pedestals and realize that Jesus came for the sinners, not the saved.

I'm a divorced single mom...and He loves me just the way I am. And I thank Him every day that He let me fall from man's grace so that I might fully experience His true grace.

And that is something the CBC leaders and most of my old friends have never experienced. They've never experienced what it feels like to be shunned by "men of God." So, even though I no longer attend CBC, I'm the lucky one. For I have experienced pain and suffering that led me to the foot of the cross.