God feels tender towards me???

Are you like me, finding yourself all too familiar with feelings of guilt, condemnation, and failure. Feelings which tempt us away from intimacy with God. (“How can God really love me; I’m such a no-good this, or such a failure at that?”)

While going through one of these self-pitying occasions, I read the following words from Brennan Manning’s Ruthless Trust;

“I found it unthinkable that God might have tender feelings for me.”

God… feeling tender… towards me???

I haven’t thought of God as “tender”; I have probably mistaken tenderness as weakness. But to think that tenderness devalues God’s strength and power is to miss the very heart of God. Isn’t tenderness best expressed by one who has great strength, and understands that strength is best used for the protection, nurture and growth of those he loves?

That describes what God did when He made the way for us to have our sins forgiven through Jesus’ death and resurrection. “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17) are words that reveal a passionately tender and strong heart. A heart that is pictured as that of a father who “pities his children… pities them that fear him… remembers that we are dust.” Psalm 103: 13-14

Psalm 23 shows that David understood God’s tenderness.

David’s life was full of struggle: he was abused, and at times was an abuser himself. From childhood to death his life was dysfunctional. He battled fear, depression, anxiety. Yet, he recognized that God’s goodness and mercy -God’s tenderness – were always present (v.6), whether walking alongside “still waters” (v.2), or through the “valley of the shadow of death” (v.4), or even in the presence of his enemies (v.5).

It was God’s tenderness that drew David so close that, in spite of his messiness, he became known as a man after God’s own heart. David would echo James’ comforting words to those who patiently endure, “that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.” (James 5:11)

God doesn’t live in denial. That makes room for His tenderness.

Those who live trying to hide their shame while portraying a false view of themselves cannot express tenderness; tenderness requires closeness which opens the door to being seen and known.

Since God has no secrets causing Him shame; since He completely knows and accepts Who He Is and has no false illusions about us; He is the only One fully free to express tenderness. The ultimate expression of His tenderness is His making the way for us to live. “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not”. (Lamentations 3:22)

Although we may not always remember that God is tender; that does not diminish His expression of tenderness towards us.

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