Meeting God's Compassion

If you would have met me last year, you'd have called me a fairly compassionate, caring person. I went above and beyond to meet the need's of everyone I knew. But I came to realize, although it's GOOD to go above and beyond for people, I wasn't doing it for the right reasons. I was serving to the point that I was getting anxious and burnt out. And why was I overburdening myself to the point of physical stress? Because I thought I had to EARN God's love.

Today, I would say the old me had a flaw in my understanding of God’s compassion. Back then, I loved truth (“the truth will set you free”  - John 8:32). I still love truth. But I've learned to correlate another aspect with truth – GRACE. Jesus, after all, is simultaneously both grace and truth. (John 1:17)

I’d never really contemplated what Jesus’s grace meant for my life. I’d never contemplated the fact that when Jesus walked the earth, He approached people with both grace and truth. Knowing this, although hard to initially grasp, I've opened my eyes to real life with Him. Beforehand, my sole aim in my relationship with God was to live perfectly. But living this way stressed out my thinking to the point of complete exhaustion. It was a never ending cycle of trying to earn favor! Before understanding grace, I was anxious all the time, I had physical aches in my chest and arms, and I had trouble thinking with clarity. But today, I have total peace. Let's compare:

The Old Me...

• Condemned myself for past sins.
• Saw people’s wrongs constantly.
• Felt anxious about messing up.
• Overly worried about losing people’s love and God's love.

The New Me...

• Believes love “keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Cor. 13:5) and lives freely.
• Sees strengths over weaknesses in others.
• Understands that God gives grace.
• Understands love is not based on merit.
• See's how God’s love does not change based on what I do.

Contemplating and finally understanding God’s grace through Jesus Christ really allowed me to see that God isn’t mad at me or waiting for me to mess up. He actually just wants me to love Him. Before, I couldn’t see how God could have had a loving relationship with His children. And given my previous mindset, this makes a lot of sense. God is not after my perfect score, He’s after my fellowship with Himself. Every Holy Spirit conviction is actually just a call back into His fellowship and love.

Now, having lived in this mindset for only a few months (I feel like a newborn baby to be honest), I am beginning to understand God’s very intense love for me. I'm seeing more and more of how much of it I don’t understand. Verses like Romans 8:15-16 that state how I am a child of God have a bigger impact on me because of my new understanding of God’s grace through Jesus Christ. I am grateful to God for carrying me to this place in my spiritual faith walk with Him.

God’s compassion in my life looks like this: I was not living in light of some truths about His character, and He could’ve let me stay in that place. But God decided (even with all the lies I was believing) to meet me in my spiritual darkness. That’s compassion.

So now, I understand that compassion acts with the relationship in mind. Compassion says, “I see that you’re hurting, and I’m going to do something about it regardless of what you’ve done to me.” God’s compassion told me to breathe and to come rest in His everlasting ocean of grace. Last year, I couldn’t believe those words. I was too scared to! Now, I hear those words and they make sense to me. I find myself thinking, “Yes, of course God would let me rest in His grace because He cares that much about me and our relationship.”

“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)

Written by the darling McKenzie Mitchell