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| Looking west across Lake Erie to Ohio, from Monroe |
Several years ago God told me "John, what others think of you is mostly not important. But what you think of others is very important." And: "What I [God] think of you and others is most important."Here there are three ideas:
- What others think of you is mostly not important.
- What is most important is what God thinks of you and others.
- What you think of others is very important.
2. What is most important is what God thinks of you and others.
The primordial truth of life is: God loves you. This is elemental and originary. From this everything else in life is derived.
Paling in comparison is: What other people think of you. When that idea becomes axiomatic, then people-pleasing follows inexorably. But from life's true, primordial state of affairs (viz., God loves you) comes security and authenticity. You are inwardly secure in His unfailing love; you are free from trying to be someone or something you are not for the sake of other people's approval. Only God's approval, only His "well done," now matters. You live every moment so as to please your Maker, with all of your life undergirded by His words "I love you."
My experience is that, when people have an abiding prayer life, God often communicates His love to them. When you abide in Christ, like a branch connected to a Vine, expect to hear and experience God's love, since God is love. This much is certain: God loves you. It will never get any better than this.
Further, God loves more people than just you. God so loved... the world! God loves the few people who think little of you. God loves the few that think much of you. And God loves the overwhelming masses of people who never think of you at all.
Think on this. 99.99999% (ad infinitum) of this world's people do not even know you exist. If the world population is 6.8405 billion people, and you have 500 Facebook "friends," that you are "friends" with, for all practical purposes, 0% of all existing persons. (Divide 500 by 6.8405 billion here and get 0%. I think it is important to understand this. Think of this while reading Psalm 8:4 - What is man that you are mindful of him?
Though this world knows you not, God does. God is mindful of you. He is also mindful of all others. God has a spacious mental capacity. And, because God is, in His essence, love, He loves you and the entire world past, present, and future.
God even loves your enemies, few though they be. We even read that while we were God's enemies, God still loved us. (Romans 5) This fact will be important when we look, in a coming post, at:
3. What you think of others is very important.
