Is God mad at me?

When God is quiet, we can often assume God is mad at us. When we do things we aren’t proud of or get busy, we can begin to wonder “Is God mad at me? Is God distancing me?" Have you ever felt like you didn’t want to pray or seek out God because He might be mad at you? This was Luke’s story.

About 4 weeks ago, I visited Rutgers with my coworker Joe. Joe is a campus minister at Rutgers with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Daily, he heads to campus to lead bible studies, prayer walk, and have coffee with students. I grabbed a train from NYC to meet Joe with the hopes of connecting with some fraternity and sorority students. As I got off the train, Joe was standing on the platform and my excitement grew. Typically in our work as campus ministers we go alone. We know God is with us, but we often meet students on our own, reach out on our own, prep bible studies in quiet coffee shops. That aloneness feels big somedays as I think about the way Jesus sent the 72 in pairs (Luke 10). I can often long for a colaborer in this work.

Immediately, we launched into our hopes for the day. Joe shared, I shared, and then we began to pray. We prayed that God would show us where He was at work. We felt like God’s spirit had gone before us to prepare something beautiful. Our plan was to prayer walk fraternity and sorority row and then to set up a table with water pong and give away snacks while asking the question “Do you think Jesus would join a fraternity?”. It was a particularly windy day, so after our prayer walk as we set up our pong table in front of the student center. We realized it’s gonna be pretty difficult to get the ping pong balls in the solo cups but we hoped there would be some brave students to stop and try! About an hour went by as we laughed and chatted with students who passsed by, but my hope was fading. We hadn’t met any fraternity or sorority students which was our hope. I paused us and prayed again, “Lord, we just need one student who is searching for you and open.”

Shortly after our prayer, a guy walked by with his fraternity letters on his sweatshirt and I called to him to come try the water pong and chat. He came over and we struck up a conversation. I explained what Greek InterVarsity was and he shared he was a Christian but he felt distant from God. I asked him, “What’s in the way?” He paused for a moment and I noticed he was actually thinking about the question, something had struck him. He answered, “I think it’s me.” I tried to hold back getting too emotional and said, “I get that, I have been there. Can I ask why you are holding yourself back from God?” He thought again and said, “I used to be really strong in my faith but I have done some stuff I am not proud of and I just feel like He probably doesn’t want to hear from me.”

My heart sank.

Because while that is a very valid feeling, it couldn’t be farther from God’s feelings for him. In those moments when we are at our lowest, God longs to be near. In the garden right after Adam and Eve first sinned, God came to draw close. He asked them, “Where are you?” He didn’t say “Come out from behind that bush, so I can punish you.”

In our brokenness of sin, God actually became the first seamstress. God made the first sacrifice by killing an animal to trade the fig leaves for proper clothes for Adam and Eve.

God came close to clothe us not to chastise us.

He covered the shame with the first clothing and He is still in the business of taking off the fig leaves we try to cover ourselves with and making real clothes for us through His son Jesus.

In that moment, I knew God was coming close to Luke to remove the shame of his current reality and cover him with a new story. So, I asked Luke if I could connect him with Joe. He said YES! Looking back, I wish I would’ve prayed that truth over him right there in the middle of campus. However, Luke said yes to meeting and a week later we sat in a Panera on campus. One by one, we each shared our own stories with Jesus. Joe and I got to pray with Luke and invite him to consider hosting a discussion group for his fraternity brothers through the book of John before He graduates this May. Again, Luke said Yes. 🙌 This is the beauty of God coming close.

So, “Is God mad at me?” probably not. Our sin does break God’s heart. But what if God is saying, “Where are you?” to clothe you in His grace not to punish you?

In Genesis 6, God sees the wickedness of our thoughts and actions, the Bible says it breaks His heart. He thinks of getting rid of humanity totally but He finds one faithful human, Noah. (You might remember Noah’s ark.) As it turns out, it doesn’t end well for Noah in the end either. Actually, all of the Bible until Jesus is the same story in different ways. God over and over again finding one faithful human who then ends up failing because as humans we can never perform our way into relationship with God. From the beginning God gave us a choice and we are prone to choose control over surrender.

So what did God do?

He decided to come to Earth in human form for the purpose of freeing us from the curse of our sin. Yesterday as we celebrated Easter, we remembered that God put on flesh and came to earth as Jesus. That He lived a perfect life and then died a bloody painful tortuous death on a Roman cross. But He didn’t stay dead, three days later in the greatest miracle the world has ever seen He rose from the dead.

Jesus’ resurrection was the cure for the curse.

He ushers in a new reality for you, for me, and for fraternity men like Luke.

So I will ask you, “Where are you?”

Are you stuck in your faith?

Are you hiding?

Are you afraid God is mad at you?

I leave you with this, What if God actually loves you? What if God longs to cover your shame with his forgiveness?