How We View God Shapes Every Relationship In Our Lives

This is an excerpt from HomeLife Magazine.

Recently, my wife, Carly, and I were tag-teaming errands, kids’ games, and rehearsals on a Saturday. As I was leaving with the kids, she looked at me and said, “Try to have fun.” I felt myself exhale at the reminder.

A game, rehearsal, and many errands later, we made it to the library.

My son, 7, came away with Calvin & Hobbes, the lovable, yet snarky cartoon of my youth. Later while preparing dinner, I heard laughter erupt as my son read Calvin’s adventures and his parents’ consistent overreaction: CALVIN!

My laugh stopped short as I realized I’ve been that dad many times, including today. I’ve overreacted to my kids being kids and shut down joy before I knew what was happening. I’ve gone to bed regretting the way conversations went, wishing I had listened more, that I had regulated my own emotions, even as I asked them to do the same.

It’s hard to model emotional health while trying to build it yourself. A friend and I were talking about midlife and how reactions can come from deep places in our past. We all expect to be finished products in our thirties, only to find there is plenty of work waiting ahead.

What do we do? In the moments of overreaction, regret, wishing I was farther along, or promising to do better tomorrow, I discovered two truths.

How God Reacts

How often do you overreact to social media, a spouse’s response, a text message, a distracted child? It’s hard to not make snap judgments and react because we trust our instincts about other people. In the same vein, we project our experiences, interactions, and emotions onto God. We expect Him to react like we do.

If you’re a perfectionist, prone to guilt and shame or those who raised you were, this can quickly go sideways. We might be unfamiliar with how our experiences and emotions are clouding our view of God’s character. Notice I’m not saying God always reacts how we want Him to; He reacts rightly. These days we’re far more prone to feel shame than mercy when we think about God thinking about us. But is that true?

How do you think God receives you when you fail? When you’re not enough? When something triggers unhealthy reactions? What or whom are you basing this on?

How I React

God wants us to become the kind of people who respond rightly more often. Perfection? Sure. That would be nice, but God’s not unaware of what we’re working with. You and I live at an inhumane speed, and we’re trying our best to keep up — which means we have little patience for distractions or threats to our attempts at controlling our lives.

It takes someone being patient with me for me to be patient with others. It takes someone seeing me as a whole person to realize how that feels and offer it to others. It takes someone loving me in my overreaction, my shame, my self-contentedness for me to love others.

Newsflash: It takes a lifetime to become more like this kind of person.

How I think God reacts to me and receives me shapes how I react to and receive others at a foundational level. It is this first relationship that effects every other in life.

I’m no cartoon dad, but I’d like to flip the exclamation points from distracted overreaction to attentive presence. Wouldn’t you?

God receives us in Christ, who is able “to sympathize with our weaknesses ... one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). Then we “approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need” (v. 16).

As I think about Calvin’s dad and my own actions, I’m encouraged that God always calls us forward. He’s not waiting to shame us into something or raise His voice. He’s calling us to life at a realistic speed, to offer all of ourselves to Him, and to trust Him to receive us rightly. A life of drawing near to Christ shapes who we become, which means we can exhale a little more.