VIRB

I want God to respect me. To delight in me...we think it's impossible, but it's not. He has respect for those who are humble, and who trembles at His word...His voice, His instructions. I want His respect...I want His blessing on my life and with the one that Iove...

A word God used in Isaiah 66:2 blows my mind. The verse says, "This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word." The word esteem means to "regard with pleasure, have respect." God is clearly saying that he respects certain people.

Do you see the like-mindedness between Christ and His Father? Our difficulty in imagining that God could have respect for a mortal is because we confuse attitudes of respect with feelings of inferiority. We tend to view respect as a feeling we have for those we perceive superior to us, and on our best day, we are so inferior to Christ that, if not for the Lord's great love (see Lam. 3:22), we would be consumed by holy fire.

If we're to have a balanced perception, we must keep in mind that God created us. We are His "workmanship" (Eph. 2:10). He loves us. At times, He actually delights in us. God could have created us void of weakness and with a complete inability to sin. He didn't. He purposely created us with free will and affections so that we could choose Him and love Him in the midst of many options and much opposition.

God didn't create robots. He created humans. When God sees humans cooperate with His good work and fulfill what they were created to be, He sees something very good. Perfect? No. Respectable? Yes. When the Father sees a human who is prone to selfishness, pride and arrogance humble himself or herself and tremble at His Word, He esteems that person. Hallelujah! Oh, how I want to be someone God could respect!