What Expression Is on God's Face When You Fail? | Who Told You That? | Chad Belew

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So Greg Popovich, who obviously, greatest coach in NBA history, I would say,

and an incredible coach for the San Antonio Spurs.

Anybody ever watched his like interviews after games?

And he's, he's a nice guy, right?

Pop was very well known for being someone who would not be nice during interviews.

And almost kind of like this hard personality.

But there's some really interesting things that, that has happened in the recent years.

Where people like Dejante Murray who played for the team for, for

a little while, before he was traded to Atlanta.

Dejante, is this what happened?

Did I mess this up?

It flipped, and the ADHD caught me.

Dejante Murray on a podcast, not long ago, was talking about Greg Popovich and

how much he meant to him.

And I think he was in that podcast.

But there's a story about, they were on a road trip.

And the team was getting ready to leave to go to practice before a game.

And Dejante was sitting in the lobby of the hotel, and

he was pretty distraught.

Something had happened with his family back home.

I think he'd actually lost someone back home, and so he was distraught.

And wasn't going out with the team, and the team was all coming out.

It was time to go, he's got a job to do.

And they're walking out, and Greg Popovich is walking by, head coach.

Walking by sees Dejante and goes over and starts talking to him.

Finds out what's going on, sits down.

Tells the team, go ahead, get out of here.

And the story, I might be making up some details, but not many.

I think, from what I remember, Pop took Dejante to go eat,

and just sat with him and listened, and just kind of poured into him.

And then said, hey, go home, we're going to send you home.

Go take every family, do what you need to do, and

then come back when you're good.

And Dejante just tells it about how caring it was, and

how loving Pop was to him.

And there's stories over and over and over and over again about this type of

relationship that Greg Popovich had with his players.

But for most of us, we don't have that relationship with Greg Popovich.

We see him through a TV or through an interview, and he just seems like he's angry.

But if you talk to people who know him, he's one of the most caring,

loving people in their circle.

Why don't I talk about Greg Popovich?

Because sometimes, we have an idea about who somebody is, but

just because we've never experienced who they really are.

And I think that has happened for most of us in our relationship with God.

Which is why the series is called Who Told You That?

It's a sermon series where we're talking about this idea of who told you

whatever it is that we'll go through.

But today, who told you that God is like that?

Who told you that that is the characteristics of God?

I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to think about this.

And this, I know it's when you see it and read it.

You may experience some things, I'm not trying to induce trauma.

Like really, but I think this is a valid question.

So the question is, when you imagine God looking at you on your worst day,

you've done the worst thing that you can imagine what expression is on God's face.

On your worst day, what expression is on God's face?

Just sit with it for a second.

When you failed, when you've disappointed someone, when you've said the thing you

wish you could pull back, when you've maybe gone quiet, when you've hidden,

when you've done the thing that you swore that you would never do again,

when you're not your best self, when you're not even close,

what expression is on God's face?

Is it anger, disappointment, frustration?

Is God tired of you?

Is God distant?

Does God look cold?

Does God look like someone keeping score?

Or maybe God's turned around and turns back to you, can't even look at you?

Or does God look like love?

I mean, this question really gets underneath a lot of our religious language really fast,

because a lot of us have a God we would describe,

and then a God we actually expect and experience.

We know the right words.

God is love, God is good, God is merciful, God is gracious.

We can say those things, but what we feel in our body when we fail

can tell a very different story.

And I think the gap is a lot bigger than many of us realize,

because a lot of us were handed language about God that sounded loving on the surface,

but underneath it carried something else.

And usually, what that meant was not just that God cares about what is right,

usually what it meant was God must punish,

God must balance the scales through violence,

God must have payment, God cannot just forgive,

God cannot just heal, just restore, God cannot just be like Jesus,

or we hear things like this.

God loves you too much to leave you the way He found you.

And I know what people are trying to say with that,

but depending on how that lands, it can start sounding less like unconditional love

and more like a coercive love.

And unconditional real love is not coercive, it can't, it cannot be.

A love that says I'll stay with you, but only while I'm changing you,

or I'll love you, but I'm still fundamentally disappointed to what you are,

or I'm for you, but I'm mostly managing you.

And for a lot of us, those ideas don't create trust, they create strain.

That there's a statement I hear all the time where,

well, yeah, God is love, but God is also just, and He's a just God.

But if God is love, there should be no comma, and there should be no but.

Right. So, we get this idea about this relationship with God.

It creates the sense that love always comes with pressure,

or belonging always comes with a threat.

Relationship always comes with a warning label.

I've told you guys this story before the sign that's up here that you are loved here.

We had screwed it on the front of the wall when we moved in.

And I remember one Sunday morning, I was in the back,

probably trying to finish a sermon that I should have finished this week.

And someone came back there and said, "Hey Chad, somebody's out front.

They want to talk to you."

I was like, like, right now?

Yeah, like they want to talk to you specifically.

All right, I went out front and someone had pulled their truck up at the corner here

and hopped out, and she came running over to me and she said,

"Are you the pastor here?" I said, "I am."

Your sign says, "You are loved here."

I said, "Yeah, it does."

But, and she looks at me, but really?

Would I be loved here?

Absolute? Yeah, absolutely.

She said, "No, no, no, I've heard that before."

See that woman in the truck? That's my wife.

Would I be loved here?

And I said, "Absolutely, you'll be loved here."

I said, "No, no, no, like really."

I said, "I promise, come inside and talk to people.

I promise you will be loved here and you will experience something

that maybe you haven't experienced before."

And I'm so sorry that you even have to ask this question.

She looked at me and she said, "Okay, we'll be back next week."

And they did.

Incredible people.

Huh? Is that right here?

And I get it.

I get the question.

I hate the question that that even has to happen.

I get that email or that DM constantly.

Hey, like, but for real, for real.

Because from what I've heard, I can't be there.

No, no, you can be here.

A lot of us were handed ideas about,

even on top of this, we were handed these ideas

about the hell that made all of this even heavier.

The idea that God would create people,

love people, long for people,

and then eternally torture people

if they did not choose correctly.

And what does that do inside a person?

What does that do to the face of God and the imagination?

What does that do to how we see other people?

Because if that is the God that you carry,

it gets really easy to imagine things like a holy war or just war.

It gets easier to imagine civilization-level enemies.

It gets easier to imagine our side is righteous

and their side is disposable.

It gets easier to imagine God's victory through annihilation.

And none of that lines up with the actual character

of God revealed in Jesus.

If this is the God that we all have and serve and believe in,

are we really the most loving people in the world?

Or really the most compassionate people in the world, kind people in the world?

How can you be if these characteristics are attached

to the source of life for us?

And I get like someone or most of you maybe are looking at me like,

Chad, hold on, wait, because I know there's

some foundational things that we're talking about

that are that I'm poking holes in.

And when you start to poke holes in like fundamental beliefs

and security starts to go in and we like security.

So I understand and I try to be the most careful that I can be

when I go into these type of conversations

because I understand that we all walk in here in different places.

And not everybody is like studying this stuff all week like I am

and it already has this background and information

and I can just say something and you hear it for the first time

and I've been thinking about it for five years.

So if that's you, I'm sorry, just take a breath

and we can have some more conversations about this.

But you see this play out.

We're seeing it play out right now.

I mean, you know what I'm talking about, you know, the Pulp Fiction Prayer.

[ Laughter ]

Well, Samuel L. Jackson, we were actually watching the NCAA,

let me preface this, our seven-year-old daughter is in gymnastics.

And so we watch gymnastics.

And really, I'm the one that usually puts it on.

I'm like, this is so crazy.

Like, how do they do this stuff?

And I know that my daughter is doing some of this crazy stuff.

But yesterday we were watching the NCAA National Championships

for gymnastics.

Which, by the way, OU won.

No, it's not why I brought it up.

That's not why I brought it up.

That's not why I brought it up.

But they did win.

It was our eighth championship, the second one, I think fifth

and a lot, no, eight in the last 12 years.

Anyway, in gymnastics?

That's crazy because I've never even seen Georgia

at any of the meets.

But thanks for telling me that.

Now I know who we're chasing.

Anyway, this is a long tangent.

But what I was going to say was, at one point,

they cut the camera.

And Samuel L. Jackson was sitting in the bleachers.

And I was like, this is hilarious.

After everything that's happened, here's Samuel L. Jackson

watching gymnastics.

While he's being quoted in a character from Pulp Fiction,

but that it's a biblical verse because our call

signed and all this stuff.

Yeah, because our--

Yeah, you know.

But this is how we can get to these places.

Because really, the whole point of that prayer from Pete

Hegseth was to try and talk about how important and how holy

and how we're going to crush the enemy

because that's what Jesus and God gives us.

You get there because you have a false understanding

of who God is.

You think that God is on our side to go crush the Muslims

because they don't believe the way we do.

And I'm going to say something and you're going to--

Muslims believe in the same God we believe in.

Hold on, hold on.

Allah just means God.

That is a translation of God.

And if we are monotheists, which means we believe there's

one God, Muslims are monotheists, Jews are monotheists.

They believe in a God, Allah, a God

that is the God of Abraham, who is also the God of Jesus.

The Abrahamic line, these are the Abrahamic religions.

They all come out of the same people group.

So they do believe in the same God.

They just have a maybe false or bad understanding

of the characteristics of God.

Now, I'm not saying that to go against them

because I think a lot of us Christians have the same thing.

I would say that a lot of evangelical Christians

and a lot of Muslims are very similar in their idea of who

God is.

And I'm not saying that I have it right or that we have it right.

But I think when you can step back and start

looking at people as people and not attaching labels to them,

then it becomes really hard to say

we should kill all these people.

Or that if we do this, it's because it's

got to happen because Jesus is going to come back.

God wants to kill all these people,

so Jesus can come back and take us to heaven.

What?

And when you start to unpack it, it just doesn't make sense.

But I grew up in it.

So it made a lot of sense.

That wasn't even all of my talk.

But last week, we talked about Genesis 3,

the beginning of life of humanity,

the fall when Eve ate of the fruit

and gave the fruit to Adam and Adam ate of the fruit

and shame entered in.

And I said, the lie that happened from the serpent to Eve

was not just like, hey, break a rule.

You can do this.

You can eat this.

The lie was deeper than that.

It was, you cannot trust the heart of God.

Did God really say that?

Oh, no, no, God knows that you'll just be like him.

That's why he didn't want you to eat this.

And once God is missing, everything else starts bending too.

Self gets missing, others get missing,

hiding begins to feel wise.

And that was week one, the lie.

Week two, what we're talking about today

is what that lie grows into.

Because when you don't see God in a good light,

and you don't see yourself in a good light,

you don't see others in a good light,

it's going to play out in life.

Because once you begin to imagine God in a distorted way,

that does not just stay in your theology.

It starts shaping the self you become,

the relationships you build, the world you help create.

A distorted God image distorts everything else.

I'm going to explain a couple of things here.

There's a difference between what I say I believe about God

and what I emotionally expect God to be like towards me.

They're not always the same.

I can even say like God is loving, and caring, and kind,

and forgiving.

But when I envision God looking at me on my worst day,

I may not see that.

What I say I believe about God

is this thing that psychologists call the God concept.

If somebody asks me what do you believe about God?

You can answer God is loving, God is near,

forgiving, kind, that that's your God concept.

God concept is this explicit, intellectual,

theological knowledge that a person has about God.

It's what you know.

It's taught, it's learned, that's the God concept.

But then there's something deeper than that,

what you emotionally expect from God.

What you expect God to be like towards you

when you're exposed, needy, ashamed, confused, failing.

And it's what psychology calls the God image.

God image is the implicit, emotional,

subjective experience of God.

It's often shaped by early life experiences, actually.

The relationship you have early, early on with caregivers.

So it's not just what I say, but it's what I brace for.

What I expect.

What I feel from God even before I think.

So your God concept is what you can say out loud,

but your God image is what you brace for.

And they can be two very different things.

You may say God is loving and still emotionally

braced for disappointment.

You may say God is near and still expect distance.

You may say God is gracious and still feel like

one wrong move is going to change God's posture towards you.

Theologically, the picture of the God concept

should be no different from the picture of the God image.

God is not surprised by our mistakes.

And God's degree of love and acceptance

does not decrease when people blow it.

So why is it that people forget these beautiful truths

about God when they're in sin?

Because underneath it all,

there's something else going on.

There's these deep patterns that we carry in relationships.

Again, in psychology, in early childhood.

There's this thing called internal working models.

It's the cognitive unconscious frameworks

developed from early childhood experiences

with caregivers guiding how individuals perceive,

expect, and behave in relationships throughout their life.

This is early stuff built into us.

Some of us grew up with,

we have very different experiences with caregivers,

or we grew up in a church that gives us

a very different experience of who God is.

And it feeds into who we believe we are.

It's this deep script that expects

what happens in relationships when you fail,

or you need help, or you feel exposed.

It's the thing in you that already knows the move.

When I fail, do I move towards someone or away?

When I need help, do I ask, or do I shut down?

When I'm exposed, do I tell the truth,

or do I manage the room?

And a lot of us carry deep expectations

about what happens in relationships when things get hard.

And this is not any different.

Our relationship with God carries a lot of the same things

because we carry it into it.

Because the God we learn becomes the God we expect,

and the God that we expect shapes the kind of person

that we become.

When fear is built into all of this.

We try to manage, we try to figure out

how to fix the relationship.

We see this so, so quickly in Scripture.

Like, right after Genesis 3 is Genesis 4.

I'm gonna skip down to my stuff 'cause I'm really late.

Right after Genesis 3, Genesis 4, Genesis 4,

Genesis 4:1

verse 1, well, Adam and Eve have a baby.

What the help of the Lord?

Eve says she brought forth a man later.

She gave birth to his brother Abel.

So they give Eve gives birth to Cain,

then she gives birth to Abel.

Abel says kept flocks and Cain works the soil.

And throughout this relationship,

they have two different ways of doing life.

And it's interesting, there's a part in here

where this is verse 4.

And Abel is verse 3.

And of course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits

of the soil as an offering to the Lord

because this we did, he farmed.

And then Abel also brought an offering,

the fat portions from some of the first born of his flock.

The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering.

But on Cain and his offering, he did not look with favor.

So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast.

Then Lord said to Cain, why are you angry?

Why is your face downcast?

If you do what is right, well you not be accepted.

But if you do not do what is right,

sin is crouching at your door.

It desires to have you, but you must rule over it.

Now Cain said to his brother Abel, let's go out to the field

while they were in the field.

Cain attacked his brother Abel and he killed him.

Right after the fall, right after eating the fruit,

right after a change of mind and perception

about who God is, Adam and Eve, they clothed themselves,

they hide, the shame enters in, they have children.

Cain and Abel, Cain and Abel,

there's an interesting part to this theologically.

Between Genesis 3 and Genesis 4 and before Genesis 3,

there's nowhere where God says that they have to make an offering to him.

So where did the offering even come from?

Why?

Why did they have to bring an offering to God?

I've got questions.

It might be that they've got a new concept of who God is.

And they think this is their way of showing that they are acceptable

and that they should be accepted by God.

And when they come, Cain, his offering is not good enough.

Because God doesn't like fruit, he likes meat.

Like, we don't even have an idea because it doesn't say why God didn't like

Cain's offering.

He's not a vegetarian.

Got it.

Cain gets angry and he turns that anger that shame to his brother

and he kills him.

This is the beginning of our story.

Because when you believe that God is someone that you have to work for

and prove yourself to and then I have to compete against you.

And if I can be better than you, then God will accept me.

But when I'm not, Cain says the only way I can fix this

is to get rid of the guides ahead of me.

What we believe about God fades out.

It goes horizontal.

It fades into who we think we are and who we think others are.

And it leads us into a place where a brother can kill a brother.

What begins as a distorted relationship with God?

It doesn't stay private.

It spills into brotherhood, it spills into family, into community.

It ended the way we see one another.

And I think it's one of the big themes between Genesis 1 through 4.

When God has misimagined, humans become misaligned.

When God is seen as unsafe, love itself becomes harder to trust.

And then God comes to Cain with another question in the story

that should sound familiar like, why are you so angry?

What happened?

The story, it's not soft, there's judgment that happens, there's consequences.

But at the end of this story, the Lord says to Cain

after saying, where's your brother?

Am I my brother's keeper?

Cain says, yes, you are.

The Lord said, what have you done?

Listen, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.

Now you're under a curse and driven from the ground,

which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you.

You will be restless, a restless wanderer on the earth.

Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is more than I can bear.

Today you're driving me from the land and I will be hidden from your presence.

I will be a restless wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me will kill me.

But the Lord said to him not so, anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.

Then the Lord puts a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him.

So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

There's a lot here here, I don't have time to unpack.

God says, this is what's going to happen.

These are some consequences of your actions.

I don't even think they're a punishment.

I think they're just saying, this is what happens when you do things like this.

There are consequences.

And Cain says, I'm going to be away from your presence and God says, no, no, no, no, you're not.

I'm going to mark you and I'm going to protect you.

There's forgiveness in that.

There's a protection for Cain. Anyone who comes after you, they've got to mess with me.

It doesn't make sense if God's angry and punitive.

I mean, that should be it.

God should turn his back on Cain.

And I know it seems like he sends him out.

No, he is reminding Cain, no, I got you.

It's going to be hard, but we're going to work through that.

We're going to talk with you.

That's not an angry, punitive God.

The first lie about God, it is followed by an immediate first wound between brothers.

And God still says, I got you.

It's not cool for Abel, if we're honest.

So, next week we'll talk about the other side of God, not the other side, the other view of God.

I'll get into a little more theological understanding of how we even get to this place of who God is or what we believe God is.

There's an 18th century pastor in the United States named Jonathan Edwards,

who famously preached a sermon called Centers in the Hands of an Angry God.

And there's so much church history and theological makeup that goes into his beginning of that sermon and how he gets there.

That most of us have grown up in that stream of theology.

Augustine of Hippo, John Calvin.

There's a line, a lineage of it, and we're going to walk through some of that next week.

There's a modern pastor, Brian Zond, who years ago wrote a book called Centers in the Hands of a Loving God as a response to Jonathan Edwards' sermon.

Two very different views of God.

And Brian Zond wasn't just a new pastor that's like, I'm kind of uncomfortable with what I'm hearing.

Let me just come up with something here.

Brian Zond's theology goes back also to 2nd, 3rd, 4th century to people like Athanasius and Aaronius.

And it goes way back on these views of God and healing and love.

So what I'm trying to say is these are not new theologies.

These are streams of theology that have shaped some of us.

And I think we have to step back and look at where we've been formed and where we may be missed who God is.

Because as Paul prayed for the Ephesians, I'm going to leave you with this, my last little passage, man. I have so many notes.

That went quick.

Ephesians 3, Paul says to the Ephesians, "For this reason I kneel before the Father.

From a whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his spirit and your inner being.

So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

And I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the Lord's people, holy people,

to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.

And to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Not to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us.

To him, to the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, amen."

Paul's prayer in Ephesians is just like this dealing of understanding of who God is as we are dealing with now.

I mean, I just pray that you would know the depths of God's love.

Because when you know the depths of God's love, then when I ask you the question, what does God's face look like when you have messed up?

I think the face may not be the same as you originally thought.

Because when you experience love, when your God image is one that God is love and is loving and caring and forgiving

and kind and moves towards you in your worst moment, then everything changes.

Because then our view of God changes, our view of our self-changes and our view of others changes.

And when you experience this love, when you're theology and your idea of who God is is more Christ-centric,

understand that God is who Jesus is, Jesus is the characteristics of God and anything that doesn't match up with Jesus,

we got to ask questions about.

Because when you experience this love, then you begin to love others.

And every single week, we say to go love well, because who you're made to be.

But I think the only way that you get to do that and the only way that you will be able to do that is by experiencing the love of God first.

Allow God to love you.

If you have an idea that God is angry at you or mad at you and wants to punish you, then ask why.

Ask where God is love fits into that story.

We'll talk way more about it next week, but I love you.

Go love some people well and we'll see you next week.