Just the way you aren't

God doesn't love you just the way you are. He just loves you. And no, he doesn't want to leave you that way. God just loving you the way you are (as a raw human) is like saying you're totally valuable, super great and totally righteous. If that were the case, well, He'd owe you His affection and we would have a works-based gospel, but the reality is just the opposite. He doesn't love you for what you are–a disgraceful lawbreaker, hell-bent on having your own way and both consciously and unconsciously at odds with holiness–but loves you in spite of that sinful condition. That's grace–that God digs you not because of, but in spite of who you are.

When we accept the "God loves me just the way I am" mentality, we fail to understand that He in fact does want us to change. He wants us to be better, He wants us to love more, He wants us to make the world a better place, to stop doing evil and to learn to do good (word up, Isaiah). Resisting personal change and improvement because of a false sense of God's love for us results in laziness and self-righteousness.

You ask with sarcasm in your voice like any good evangelical would, "So God isn't happy with me unless I'm a good person?" Yes. That's totally, absolutely true. And He loved you enough to give you every opportunity and every resource needed to be that good person He desires, even though you don't deserve it. It's through faith in Jesus, who paid your gigantic spiritual credit card debt with His blood and through the Holy Spirit who is like your heavenly administrative assistant, that YOU, by living a life of increasing surrender and obedience, can put a smile on God's face. That's grace. He makes the way, so we can walk in it. Those who say "stop trying to please God with your life because He'll think you're trying to earn it" are wrong. They've misunderstood. If that's how you're operating, don't change your behavior (doing good things), change your attitude (from "God owes me" to "I owe God").

"What if I can't change?" you might ask. "What if it's too hard? What if I fail? What if I give myself a complex by trying to be something I'm not?" Remember, we're not earning God's love. Yes, that would suck if God would only love us if we were good and perfect. We would be doomed and without hope, heads drooped in continual despair. But he loves us, period. Yesterday, today and tomorrow. In sin and clawing out of it. He loves, loves, loves, always and forever (to quote a ballad about technology). Love does not equal happiness or approval. Love is what breaks a heart when a relationship is severed or a life is squandered. It's the fact that love remains in spite of wrong or evil or discipline that makes it hurt so good (to quote an 80's rock song). Dysfunction and mental illness come from thinking you can earn God's love from your actions, as if it will evaporate when you mess up. Health and life come from knowing that you have always been loved and always will be and that continually working to improve is the most beautiful expression of thankfulness you can offer your Father in Heaven.

So don't settle for who you are. Let the reality of being loved by God unsettle you into becoming who He wants you to be.

Now read these verses: Leviticus 11:44, 1 Peter 1:15, Psalm 18, Hebrews 9:13, John 14:24, Romans 5:6 and 8:29.