I Was Hooked on the Feeling

For too long, I thought that I had to feel God's love in order for His love to be there.

Never once did I understand the fullness of the Cross, or the finality of all that Christ Jesus did for me.

I grew up in a home where my father put the Ten Commandments on the wall, and where my mother was a stepper Mom, obsessed with the Twelve Steps, and she insisted that I had to work those steps, too.

Even when my life was falling apart, to her I was still an alcoholic.

That's how deep she was in the cult. And as for my father -- he did nothing at all while my mother abused me with lies and scriptural distortions, making herself God, sponsor, and all-around do it all in my life.

I never knew God's love for me, because I was hammered constantly with judgemnet, reproach, and fear, all while going through the motions of the Twelve Steps, trying to live a life which He lives in me, and has wanted to live in me for so  long.

God did the best that He could with what I was willing to let Him do.

I was so obsessed with feeling or not feeling, thinking or not thinking a certain way.

His love does not depend on how I feel, and nothing can separate me from His love.

If there is any bondage or lack in my life, all of it is borne on a lack of knowledge, a lack of understanding about all that He has done.

The answer -- a greater understanding of all that He did for me at the Cross!

Not taking my inventory, but resting in His love for me, and giving up the self-righteousness which demands that we think or feel a certain way.