If you struggle to believe God loves you or you wonder if he even likes you, today's Building Relationships is for you. David kind of pauses and says, how precious to me are your thoughts, O God? How vast is the sum of them? If I would count them, they're more than the sand. I awake and I'm still with you.
He's just swimming in the pool of God's love. He's just so confident and so sure of it that it really equips him for whatever circumstances he faces in life. I really think that's how we need to live. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" .
Today, author Glenna Marshall tackles the distance between your feelings and the reality of God's love. Our featured resource at buildingrelationships.us is Glenna's book, Known and Loved. The subtitle is Experiencing the Affection of God in Psalm 139.
So if you've never read the Bible or it's been a while, this is a great passage to dig into. And we're going to do that straight ahead here on Moody Radio. Again, the website's buildingrelationships.us. And Gary, my first question to you is, How do the love languages and God go together? Do they?
You know, Chris, I wrote a book some time ago because people kept asking me, what's God's love language? And so I just went through the Bible again. I found out God speaks all five love languages fluently. And I also found out that many times people are actually drawn to God. That is, they feel His love.
uh through their love language, their primary love language.
So many times that's when they come to accept Christ.
So I'm excited about our program today because God loves everybody and He speaks their language. They just need to have a heart that's open to hear God. Yes.
Well, let's introduce our guest, Glenna Marshall is her name. She is married to her pastor, William. She's the mother of two sons, author of several books, including The Promise is His Presence, Everyday Faithfulness, and my personal favorite, Memorizing Scripture. She is a member of Grace Bible Fellowship in Sykeston, Missouri, where she and her husband have served for more than 20 years. We have her book linked at buildingrelationships.us.
It's titled Known and Loved. Just go to buildingrelationships.us.
Well, Glenna, welcome to Building Relationships. Thank you. It's an honor to be here. Let's start with that concept of God's love and those who struggle to believe that He loves them. You know, a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their minds around that concept, don't they?
They do, and I think that's because we've seen so many imperfect ways of loving one another as humans that we often conflate or imbue God's love with kind of flawed human versions of it. And so, I think because we've maybe been on the receiving end of a poor version of love, or we have not received love from someone who should love us, like a father or a mother, maybe, we misunderstand or disbelieve God's love because of those experiences. Yeah. Talk about your own journey. Did you struggle to believe you were known and loved by God as a child and then maybe into your adult years?
Yeah, I have to say, I grew up in a church that was just wonderful church, wonderful pastor, but there were a group of people in the church who subscribed to an extra-biblical doctrine that sort of elevated certain kinds of behavior. That would Make you sort of a top-tier Christian if you performed in these ways. And these were not biblical demands, they were extra-biblical. And though I understood on some level that these were not necessarily God's commands, the church culture in that church sort of taught me by example that if I did these things, God would love me more. And if I did not do these things, God would love me less.
And it really warped my understanding that as a believer in Jesus, I have all of God's love and approval in Christ. I could not earn it, therefore I cannot lose it. And so I really had to undo this kind of misunderstanding of God's love that if I read my Bible or if I attended church, which are very important for the Christian life, but I was doing them to make sure I kept God's love, which was just such a destructive way to live when he has given it freely. I think there are probably a lot of our listeners who have experienced something similar to what you're saying.
So let's talk about the Psalms and why they are so important in Biblical literature. Give us a context for these poems in the Psalms. Wow, I love the Psalms because they are just so real in the way that the authors wrote them. You know, there's multiple authors that we're working with in the book of Psalms. They were the song book of the people of Israel.
They are written in ways that communicate truths about God in really concrete ways. A lot of the things that we know about the Lord are sort of abstract in concept when you're talking about character traits and the things he has done and the ways that he loves us. But the psalmists communicate those ideas in real concrete ways of imagery that sort of cement them in our memories, which I really love. I would say that I think the statistic, if I remember right, almost half of the psalms are lament psalms, which are psalms written to convey biblical complaint and fear and anxiety, as well as sort of making the turn to remember God's past faithfulness in order to trust in his future faithfulness.
So they really give us the language of prayer and praise and sorrow and confession. And I just think the Lord giving us the Psalms in His Word was a true gift.
Well, now there's 150 Psalms in the Bible. Why did you choose to focus on one Psalm, Psalm 139, in this particular book?
Well, I think this is a very well-known and well-loved psalm. And I think in our Sort of social media saturated, always scrolling lifestyles, we have become. Poor readers, and I don't know about you, but I tend to read my Bible too quickly and sort of skim over things that I think I already know, and I think there's something. Very helpful about slowing down and sort of chewing on one passage for a really long time. This is why I'm a proponent for memorizing scripture because it just forces you to meditate deeply on God's word and think over the word choices.
You know, why this attribute of God? Why that imagery? Why that verb? Why is he speaking in present tense here and past tense there? I think those kinds of ways of thinking through the text really work it into your mind and heart in a more meaningful way rather than just reading very quickly.
Additionally, I find this psalm to speak specifically to our desire to be known and personally loved by God as individuals, not just part of a group. I think the way that David the psalmist penned this psalm under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is just so personal. And so I knew I wanted to walk through it. When I think about God knowing me and loving me anyway, I immediately. Think of the opening verse, O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up. And then he gets into all these specifics. You know my thoughts before I think them, my words before I speak them, my steps before I take them. And he just goes on and on to just the ways that God is intimately acquainted with his people. And that intimate acquaintance communicates love.
Pretty amazing when you read those words and think about life and your life. How does God's knowledge and love differ from our knowledge and love? Mm.
Well, you know there are attributes of God that we sort of image to the world because we are created in his image. And then there are attributes of God that we try to image to the world and we don't do such a great job because they are divine attributes. God's knowledge is different from ours in so many ways. I mean, not least of which being He holds all knowledge. He knows everything, for He created everything.
And He knows us in a way that is determinative. He knows us in a way that he has ordained our days for us. He knows us in a way that we don't know ourselves. He also knows people in ways that we don't, in that he knows motive, where we never, almost never do we know someone's true motive. But boy, we are quick to assign motive, aren't we?
And so. Our knowledge is so different from his because our knowledge is so limited, whereas his is completely limitless. And so when you think about his knowledge being as thorough as it is and complete and pair that with his goodness and his holiness, he really is the only one who can be trusted to be all-knowing, to be all-loving, to ordain the lives of his people, to act in the way that he does, because he is sovereign, but he is also good. And that makes him trustworthy in a way that we never will be. Glenna, there's a word you use throughout the book that I want you to talk about.
It's the word delight. Why is that word so important for us to understand? I think that for many of us, maybe those of us who grew up in a situation like I did in the church where you maybe believe that God loved you less at certain points in your life, you may struggle to believe that he even likes you. And so you think of God and you think of him putting up with you and sort of a curmudgeonly arms-crossed, furrowed brow, just kind of put out with you and your failures at all times. And so I think it's important that we reorient our understanding of the way God feels about us with the word delight.
I can think of, you know, the ways that Jesus talked to his disciples and how deep his love was for them. And he would say things like, the love that the Father has for me is the love that I have for you. And he's talking about perfect love, delighting love. And I think we really need to come to terms with the fact that God's heart towards us is one of delight. If we have been forgiven, Given and made new in Christ, we do not have to fear this curmudgeonly, sort of miserly sort of father, but rather the father in the parable of the lost son who runs towards his son.
Mm.
Yeah. Well, you know, if it's so clear in the Bible that God loves us individually and delights in us, Why do we often have struggles with believing that? I sort of go back to Genesis 3 on this one. I think Doubt is our biggest struggle. I think so much of what we struggle with in sin, you know, as far as sin is concerned, as far as our questions about God, is really rooted in that we doubt His word to us.
So, you can go back to Eve and Adam standing next to the tree, and you know, the serpent coming to them and sort of rewording what God had said. And they're standing there saying, Well, you know, did God really say this? And they question him, and once they question him, they act on that doubt. And that has just spiraled us into a whole host of problems. We all have a problem of sin, and so I think that doubt component is sort of.
It's underlying that problem of, I struggle to believe that God loves me. And I think it's just because we struggle to believe the words that He has said, a doubt is a problem. We have to fight with the truth of Scripture. I think you douse that fire of doubt with the living water and the words of Christ. Yeah, let's hope we do better than Eve and Adam, okay?
You're right. I mean, Satan said, you know, did God really say that? You know? And so we do ask that question when we read something in the Bible. Is that really true?
Well, talk to the person who feels defeated by some wrong choices they've made, maybe some kind of addiction, and they're caught in a shame cycle. They they feel badly about themselves and what they have done. What do you say to that person? I would send them directly to verses 7 through 12 in Psalm 139 because the psalmist sort of makes this motion with his arms. You can kind of visualize it.
He basically points up and down and right and left and basically asks, is there anywhere I can go, Lord, that you are not there? And then he says, surely darkness will cover me and the light about me be night. But then he says, but the darkness is not dark to you and the night is bright as the day for darkness is as light to you. And I think when we think about shame, when we think about embarrassment for the ways that we have sinned, whether past sins before we were saved or the sins of this morning, it's so tempting to allow shame to keep you from the Lord. But I think what David is saying here is it's not dark to him.
He knows everything. He knew you were going to make these choices before you did. And so the answer here is not to hide from him, because first of all, you can't, but also rather consider his presence in your life as a gift, not as a threat, and run to him with your shame. For those who are in Christ, we know from Romans 8, there is no condemnation because Jesus took all of our punishment for all of our sin. And so we no longer stand condemned.
And there is so much freedom in that. And I really think that's why we need to preach the gospel to ourselves again and again. Yeah, so good for us to hear that because all of us from time to time have done things and will do things that are not good. You know, and we do feel badly about it. And we should feel badly, but we shouldn't be hung with those negative feelings.
Yeah, I agree with what you're saying. We run to God. Lord, you know what I did? You know what I'm feeling right now? You know, thank you that Christ paid for it.
I confess it to you. Accept that forgiveness and get up and move on, right? Amen.
Well, you wrote a book on memorizing scripture. Did you memorize all 24 verses of Psalm 139? I feel like I know it well because I studied it so well to write the book, but I have to confess, I did not, but that's only because I was memorizing First Peter when I wrote this book, and I am not good at memorizing in two places at once. I've learned this about myself.
However, my mother, I have to brag on her, my mother memorized all 24 verses in preparation for reading my book when it was published. And she told me, just, I mean, more so than reading my book, the process of memorizing this psalm just encouraged her faith so much. And that really is. The point of memorization: it's while you're memorizing, it just builds up your faith and your appreciation of God's love for you. Yeah.
Boy, I can certainly agree with that. I remember early in my life, The Navigators, I don't know if you know that name. Yeah. They emphasize memorizing scripture. And it's had a tremendous impact on my own life.
Well, you know, in verses 13 and 14, They talk about God's forming our inward parts. and knitting us together in the womb. And then it says, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
So how can you reconcile that concept in a world where people have chronic disease and disabilities and terminal illnesses? It's a hard question, but I think that we have to start first with what God tells us is true. And his word is true. He did form us in our mother's wombs with care, with wonder. It was good work the way that he made us.
And yet, the reality is that we live in a world tainted by the fall of man. Sin has permeated every part of the human existence. And so we do have bodies that don't work and bodies that aren't formed correctly by our standards. And I can speak to this as someone who has suffered many, many years with a chronic pain disease. It's autoimmune in nature, so there is no cure.
I will have this disease for the rest of my life. I also was unable to have children. I found that out early in my 20s. And, you know, in God's kindness, adopted my sons. Both of my sons have had significant health challenges throughout their lives.
My husband's a type 1 diabetic.
So we understand the brokenness of Bodies in this household, and yet I fully believe what David says here in Psalm 139:13 that God created our bodies with care. I do think that bodies that are broken can really serve as sort of a signpost that this is not all there is, and that our true best lives are yet to come. When the Lord returns for us, when He sets up the new heavens, new earth, we are going to have resurrected bodies that will never suffer, that will be as God intended. They will live forever and they will never suffer once. And I, as someone who has a chronic disease, it has untethered me from the here and now, and it has made me long for that resurrection day.
I love to quote Don Carson, who said, I'm not suffering from anything a good resurrection can't fix. I like that.
Well, you know, what you're saying is so true. Many people have various kinds of difficulties, you know, physically in their body. We're in a fallen world and we're going to die, you know. Yeah, but our eyes also are beyond this life. Yeah, so, so true.
So does some of our doubt about God's love come from a desire to matter or to make a difference in the world or to be remembered? And we feel a disconnect with that idea. We feel we don't matter and we are not going to be remembered because we're not worth anything. Speak to those feelings. I think we all have a desire to leave some kind of mark on this world in some way.
I think if you go over to, I believe it's Ecclesiastes 3, where Solomon talks about God has set eternity in our hearts. It is very much in our DNA to desire to matter in this life. And the thing we have to remember is that we do because God created us in his own image, which sets us apart from all creation. He created everything and it was good. And then he created man and it was very good because man bears the image of God.
And so that gives our lives intrinsic value, which. Even if no one ever knew your name and you lived and died in obscurity, your life still mattered because God imbued your life with meaning at creation.
So that's an important thing to remember. But I think that even when we live small lives or what we might call a small existence where we didn't write books or we didn't host shows or we weren't famous or recognized in the general public, that does not determine our value. What God requires of us and what we long to hear when we see him face to face one day is, well done, my good and faithful servant. It's not my wealthy servant, my accomplished servant, my famous servant. It's my faithful servant.
And so whatever context God has placed us in, whether it's a small circle of influence, your family, your church, your small town, your neighborhood where you live, the job that you work. If you are faithful to Christ and obedient to his commands and live a life that proclaims him, That's enough. And that matters so much. We don't have to think that we have failed the Lord because we didn't live a big, flashy life. Yeah.
Yeah, we don't have to have T V programs and all that sort of thing to have an impact. You know, it brings to my mind a friend of mine many, many years ago. He was a pastor for a few years until he got a disease that eventually rendered him helpless to do anything. He lay in a bed 24 hours a day. He could not move his hands, his legs.
He could move his head up and down. And so the local library came out and set up a little apparatus where he could put it his wife could put a book in front of him on that apparatus and with his neck going down he could move the pages.
So he was able to read. But he was a prayer warrior. I made sure I let him know everything I was doing and asked him to pray for me. I will never forget the impact he had on my life.
So, you know, I mean, he had almost no physical abilities, but through the ministry of prayer, he was having an impact on my life and the lives of many, many other people.
So that's always been encouraging to me in the light of the things that happened to us as well. Let me flip that around to you, Gary, and ask you that question because a lot of the And a lot of the external validation that we get, then you know, you do great things for God and then you feel better about yourself. What Glenda seems to be saying is that there's something deeper than this that we can be satisfied. You spent a lot of years when people didn't know your name around the country and around the world. You didn't have a best New York Times best-selling book and that kind of thing.
And my sense is that didn't change for you when "The 5 Love Languages" came along. There was something settled in your own heart about your worth to God from long ago. Can you talk about that?
Well, you're exactly right, Chris. And that's why I say to young pastors and other, well, not pastors, just Christians, you know, just, you know, however God has gifted you, and we're all different, just think in terms of, now, Lord, you know who I am, you know my personality, you know my abilities. Just guide me. Give me wisdom on how to invest it in your kingdom. Because God has a plan for every one of us.
And we don't have to be known by other people. We're going to be known by somebody because we're going to be ministering to somebody. But it doesn't have to be a colossal audience that we have. But just help us, Lord, to be faithful. To me, that's the issue.
Take whatever God has given you. And put it in his hands and say, Lord, I'm yours. You know what you want me to be doing.
So direct me, give me wisdom, give me whatever I need to do it, and just be faithful and leave the results to God. Yes.
You know, leave the results to God. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So, the outworking, then, of that, Glenna, is it sounds to me like what you're talking about here is that you feel you have a confidence, a settled confidence. That God's love is here, no matter my circumstances, that I can live in light of that love, kind of swim in that pool of His love, even if the situations that I'm in are really difficult right now. Is that true? Yeah, I think so.
And the way you're wording this just takes me back to verses 17 and 18 in Psalm 139, where David kind of pauses and says, How precious to me are your thoughts, O God, how vast is the sum of them. If I would count them, they're more than the sand. I awake and I'm still with you. And I think those verses kind of speak to what you're just saying. It's like he's just swimming in the pool of God's love.
He's just so confident and so sure of it that it really equips him for whatever circumstances he faces in life. I really think that's how we need to live. Yeah. For those people, uh Glenna, who who do have you know certain problems. They can be physical, they can be mental or whatever.
And they're saying, you know, if God loved me, why did He allow this to happen to me? You know Respect to that issue. That's a really hard question because we view love so often as only good things happen. If only good things happen to me, then that means God loves me. And if something bad happens to me, that must mean that he doesn't love me.
But in scripture, that is just not the economy of God. Because I mentioned 1 Peter earlier. I was memorizing it last year. And in chapter 1, he talks about Christians going through the refining fires of suffering in order to produce genuine faith. And then later in the book, in chapter 4, he says, don't be surprised by suffering.
Christ suffered.
So arm yourselves with the same way of thinking because if you share in the sufferings of Christ, you also are going to share in the glory of Christ when he returns. And so the suffering that we face in this life, because God is kind and he's not do anything arbitrarily, he uses our suffering to grow our faith and I think deepen our dependence on him. I think of Romans 8, 28, where Paul tells us that God works all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
So he's going to respond. Recycle our sorrows for good in some way. And if we don't see it in this life, we will definitely see it in the next. Yeah. Uh You're listening to the Building Relationships with Dr.
Gary Chapman podcast. He's the author of The New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Our guest today is author Glenna Marshall. You can find her latest book at buildingrelationships.us. It's titled Known and Loved, Experiencing the Affection of God in Psalm 139.
Find out more and discover more simple ways to strengthen your relationships at buildingrelationships.us.
Well, Glenn, we're talking about Psalm 139, and your book is based on that Psalm, and it's so clearly about the love of God. But there is a section in there where the psalmist says some negative things about wicked people. Let me read this, and I want you to share your thoughts on this. He says to God, If only you would slay the wicked, O God, away from me, you bloodthirsty men. They speak of you with evil intent.
Your adversaries misuse your name. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? I have nothing but hatred for them. I count them my enemies. Whoa!
Put that on a coffee mug. Yeah, how does that sound like love? I had someone tell me recently that they were memorizing Psalm 139 and they stopped when they got to that weird part.
So I knew exactly which part they were referring to. And it feels out of place to have. This imprecatory, or what we call a cursing psalm in this section of what to this point has been a really beautiful, encouraging psalm that exalts God's character and helps us see the way that He loves us. But there's a few things that I think are important to remember. First, this is King David writing.
So he was king of Israel. Israel was God's chosen people. And so David has some enemies at this point in time, and this is only true for these people at this point in time, but to be an enemy of the king of Israel. Was to be an enemy of God, and to be an enemy of God was also to be an enemy of Israel, because they were his people chosen for a purpose that we now know was to send the Messiah, Jesus.
So when David looks at people who are against this God whom he has exalted in the first 18 verses, His reaction is: okay, if they have set themselves up to be God's enemy, then they're also setting themselves up to be my enemy because I am aligning myself in loyalty with the God of the universe because of how good he has been to me. He also has just referenced how carefully God has created human beings and the esteem with which we should hold image bearers. And then when you get to verse. Let's see, verse 19. He says, Oh, that you would slay the wicked.
He talks about them being oppressive, and they are men of blood, meaning they take human life, which we have already learned is something that God holds as dear and precious because he created human life. And so these people are in direct opposition. They have rejected God, they've rejected his people, they've rejected his word.
So the question is: should we feel the same way towards enemies of God as David? And that's where, as people sitting on this side of the gospel story, we have to also remember passages like, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. And Jesus teaching us to turn the other cheek and to pray for our enemies. And so, I think we have to hold both things in hand. knowing that we were all first enemies of God.
Paul describes us in Colossians as being alienated, hostile in mind, doing evil deeds. In Ephesians, he calls us dead in faith.
So, we were enemies of God, and because of Jesus, we have now been made not just friends, but children. And He is giving us His inheritance for eternity.
So, we have been moved from enemy to beloved child. And so, when we see people who are very much maybe oppressing others, oppressive to children, or oppressive to specific people groups, and who are dishonoring the value of human life that God has so carefully created, then what our prayer for them should be twofold: we should pray, Lord, end their wickedness. Either through repentance or through death. And I know that sounds really, really extreme, but what I mean is we want him to end the oppression of those who are being mistreated. But we also want our enemies to come to faith in Christ, just the way we were forgiven and came to faith in Christ.
And we leave it up to God to decide what is best. We never take vengeance in our own hands because we will not do it. the way that God will do it, with integrity and holiness and perfect justice. Yeah, I think often we want to see God do something now. You know, why doesn't God zap the people that are doing wrong?
You know, but the Bible says God's patient. Not willing that any perish, but that all come to repentance. He will judge them if they don't repent. That's right. That's right.
But he's so loving, kind. He has so much patience for his people. And so we need to exercise that same kind of grace. That's right. That's right.
You know, praying God bring them to a place of repentance so they can be forgiven and come into the family. You know, that's our prayer. But we don't have to worry. God will see that justice is done. If they don't repent, yes.
But he's going to be patient. And again, hoping that they will turn to him.
Well, how about the warning passages of the Bible? Because the Bible does say many times, you know, don't do this, you know, and those who do this, something will happen. Can we become so confident in God's love that we ignore You know, these words of Scripture that give us clear things on what we are not to do and what we are to do. I think our confidence in God's love has to be based on what scripture tells us rather than how we feel or how we think we're performing. Because you can become callous to the sin in your life, which is why I think just regular Bible reading, hearing regular preaching, prayer with your local church, and regular heart examination is so important because we can be hard-hearted towards our own actions.
I think in the book of Hebrews, we see a lot of warnings about falling away. And I think a lot of people struggle with fear of those passages. And so they actually don't have any confidence in God's love because they are afraid: well, if I'm confident of His love, that I might be falling away and I won't realize it. And so I think what's important to remember is that the warnings in scripture. Warnings.
They're not indictments about things that you have already done. They're warnings that you do not in the future fall away. And what's so wonderful because God's word is so good is that usually with those warnings, there are instructions for how not to fall away. And the answers are always rooted in remembering God's word, remembering who He is, coming back to Scripture, uniting with the people of God-you know, really just spiritual disciplines that anchor us in faithfulness and are a prevention from falling away. And so I think if we are living our lives that way and doing regular examination of our hearts, We'll live in God's love, but we won't be so proud that we think we're untouchable by sin.
I think that's where we can err. Yeah. And the other factor, of course, is if we do sin... God will convict us. God will chasten us because we're His children.
He does the same thing for us that parents do for their children. We discipline them when they do wrong because we love them.
Well You talk about looking through a gospel lens at this Psalm 139.
Well, what does that mean?
Well, in John 5, 39, Jesus said that all of the law and the prophets bear witness about him. And I think that means that all of scripture ultimately is about him or points to him. And so when we read a psalm like this, we have to remember the story of Jesus' birth, life, death, resurrection, and his promise to return. We are people of... Christ.
We belong to him, which has bearing on how we live and how we view scripture. And I think that our ability to be so confident in God's love for us really must be rooted in the fact that God loved us so much that he sent Jesus to save us, to reconcile us to God so that we could live in that confident love. I think the gospel changes everything. We need regular reminders of it. We don't just need it for salvation.
We need it for sanctification too, because God continues to shape us with the truth of what Jesus has done for us. He doesn't just save us and then walk away and say, good luck. You know, do your best. I'll see you on resurrection day. He says, no, I have saved you and now I'm going to sanctify you and I've given you my Spirit to dwell in you, and I've given you my word to give you instructions and encouragement.
I've given you the church to help you hold fast. He is with us every step of the way, and it's such a gift of what he has done for us in Christ. It's the best news there is. I would agree with that.
Well Well, is Psalm 139 about us? Or about God. When you read it, there's a lot of personal pronouns being used, so it is very tempting to say, it's about us. But I think because God's word is his revelation of himself to us, ultimately it is about him. And I don't know if we can have proper knowledge of self until we first have proper knowledge of God.
Because when we view Life. Through the circumstances of what our desires are and what we hope our lives will be like, and then we're disappointed by those things, then we sort of create God in our own image. We are disappointed that He hasn't behaved in a way that we think is best, and that makes us question His love for us. But when we start by viewing a psalm like this, or indeed all of Scripture, by looking at God's character, what He is telling us about who He is, when we kind of Flip the script and let that be the lens through which we view the world. Then we understand going into hard circumstances.
I know that God loves me, therefore, in this suffering, he is going to use it for good. And it just reshapes the way we think about our lives when we start first looking at who he is.
So, long answer to your question: I think Psalm 139 is about him first and foremost. Yeah. Yeah. Glenn, talk to the person who agrees with everything you've said today. Yeah, all the things in your book.
But they still feel like God is holding them at arm's length. They just don't feel that closeness to God. What do you say to this person? This is where You need to let God's word inform your feelings because sometimes feelings they can emotions they can tell us how we feel, but they don't always tell us what's real, what's true. But God's word will.
So, my challenge would be an actual like hands-on challenge here because this was a practice I took on about 15 years ago and it absolutely changed my life. I would challenge you, if you struggle to believe that God really feels affection for you, is to open your Bible. You could start with the Psalms, you could start with the Gospel of John. That's a good one for this practice. Actually, all of scripture is good for this, but start with the book of the Bible, read a chapter, read a section each day, get like a spiral notebook and a pen.
You don't need to buy anything fancy, and just answer this one question: What does the Bible teach me about God? I'm talking like his character, his actions, how he works behind the scenes. What is the text communicating to you about who God is? You are going to be blown away over time with this practice of how it reshapes your understanding of who God is and who he is to you and how he feels towards you. I think a lot of times our understanding of God is very much influenced by the people in our lives, the relationships in our lives, maybe even poor teaching we've had over the years.
And ultimately, God has spoken to us through his word. And so we need to listen. And so when you let him tell you who he is, it will dramatically reshape. Your understanding of who he is and deepen your understanding of just how much he loves you. Let me challenge our listeners with what you just said.
What if you choose a book in the Bible? and you read a chapter every day. and you ask the question, What does this chapter teach me about God? and have a little note book there, and write it down. That's a very practical thing.
But I agree, Glenna, with what you're saying, and I think this could help a lot of people, because there are many out there who go to church on a regular basis, but they don't have a daily sit-down time. and listen, you know, to God through the scriptures.
So let me challenge our listeners to take that seriously. Can I add to that, Gary, just something that sparks in my mind from this psalm devotional that I go through. One of the Psalms, the person who writes this says, here's the best way that you can exercise your faith and allow God to work in your life, and that is to let God love you. And Glenna, I think there are a lot of people who say God can't love me because of this. God can't love me because of that.
And when I clean up my act, then I'm going to feel, you know, it's like they have to perform for God in order to receive His love. And we go back to that whole swimming analogy that I had a little bit ago. If you allow God to love you right where you are with all the struggles and the problems and the difficulties and the sin and mistakes and sin and everything, if you allow him to love you right here and believe that, that can be transformative too, can't it? It definitely can. I think we have to remember that while we were still enemies of God, He loved us and sent Jesus.
He did not wait until we had cleaned ourselves up. I have a friend at church who always says, God cleans his fish after he catches them. You do not have to wait. He will do the work of growing you and sanctifying you. You coming to him as you are, you are perfectly qualified to come to Jesus.
He loves us in spite of our sin. Yeah. Say a word to parents who may be listening, who have young children. What advice would you give them on how to teach or instill these truths of Psalm 139 and God's love into their children?
Well, I think memorizing it with your kids is a great place to start, or even just reading a little portion of it each night, maybe before bed or at dinner or something like that. I think discipling your kids just with an open Bible is so helpful. I think some of the key truths to take away and to make sure that you teach your children in this passage, first, that God sees and knows all, that they're not hiding their sin from God. They're just keeping themselves from him and from understanding his love. And so you're teaching them to be quick to confess their sin to the God who already knows about it.
I think also teaching them the inherent value of human life. Our kids spend so much time living a digital existence and it's not very humanizing. And so we denigrate human life when we live our lives online. We need to teach our kids the value of human life from womb to tomb so that our children honor the lives of image bearers. I think that's something that is going to be key in teaching this next generation because of the influence of the internet and social media.
And so it's something I'm working on with my children. It's just different raising kids right now. It's very challenging with the online influence. And so I think taking them to God's word, remember, we love what God loves. and we hate what God hates.
And so I think just simple discipleship, read portions of the passage with them and ask them good questions. They're sharper than we give them credit for. Absolutely. I was in a plane recently. There was a husband sitting beside of me and a son beside of him.
And in front of us was the wife and a daughter sitting beside of her. All four of them were were on their phones the whole three hours of that trip. Goodness. No conversation between. Wow.
That thought, oh, Father, where are we? Oh, my goodness. Yeah, we have a no-phones rule at dinner, and I'm really strict about it. Yep, that's great. That's a great rule.
Absolutely. Well one more one more group. Talk to older listeners. Who kind of feel left out. Maybe they're in a rest home of some kind or they're not remembered or they're not valued because no one calls them, no one comes to see them.
What do you say to that person from Psalm 139? The Lord sees you. The Lord knows you. The Lord is with you, and the Lord loves you. And just because your life has.
Gotten smaller, it does not mean that it is less valuable or less significant. I think of my grandmother who died a couple years ago. She died on her 96th birthday, and she is one of the most faithful Christians I have ever known. She's very much, you know, a reason why I am here today talking to you. She was a first-generation Christian, and she lived a really small life, but she was faithful in what God had given her to do.
She loved His Word, she loved His church. She was one of those prayer warriors, like your friend Gary. Oh, she always called it, I'm holding on to the horns of the altar for you every single day. She would just have this deep prayer time where she interceded for so many people, discipled many young women, but in her later years was physically unable to attend church. She lost her vision, she couldn't even read her Bible.
But she spoke of Jesus to every person who came into the room. And I just think. That is valuable. That is so valuable. Even with her limitations, which were great, she still spoke the name of Jesus to anyone who came in the house.
She recited all the scriptures she'd memorized throughout her life. And I just, I think you will never know her name. But you know what? God knows her name and he loved her to the very end.
Well Well, that's God's plan for all of us. He's there wherever we are and whatever stage of life we're in. He's with us and he will walk with us.
So, Glenna, let me thank you for being with us today. Let me thank you for writing this book. I think it's going to help a lot of people. I hope our listeners will get it because God knows you and God loves you. And so this book can help you meditate upon this passage from the Scripture.
So thanks for being with us today. Thank you so much. It was a joy. Once again, Glenna Marshall has joined us at Building Relationships, and you can find out more about her book at the website buildingrelationships.us. The title is Known and Loved.
Experiencing the affection of God in Psalm 139. And let me also put a plug-in for that memorizing scripture book, which has made a difference in my life. You can look for that as well online. But Known and Loved is our featured resource at buildingrelationships.us. And next week, we hear about a marriage game plan.
Just like they have a game plan for sports, a marriage game plan. How do you win at marriage? Don't miss a conversation with two marriage coaches who also happen to be NFL chaplains. Before we go, let me thank our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Backing. Building Relationships with Dr.
Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.
