Meet "Cec" Murphey

If you don't already know my friend Cecil Murphey, then you need to meet him. He's a Presbyterian pastor in the P.C.U.S.A. I first met him while we were in seminary together. He has served as a missionary in Kenya, as pastor of a local church in Atlanta, but his greatest gift and true ministry is as an author. He's published 128 books, but who's counting! He's had one made into a Hallmark movie for TV titled Gifted Hands. You can find it on Netflix, or get a copy of the book, or the movie from Amazon. His best seller 90 Minutes in Heaven has been on the New York Times best seller list for about 3 years.

I am posting a "daily reading"- and I call it that because his latest book Knowing God. . . Knowing Myself is filled with aphorisms for daily living- seems the best way for you to get to know Cec. I like this particular chapter a lot. It's called God's Love for Me.

This may not be rational, but if I worked hard, I honestly thought I could make God love me more. I didn't say those words aloud and never would have ever admitted I felt that way. But, deep, deep within, that's exactly my attitude.

I could blame that on my childhood, when I was never able to please my father. I spent many of my adult years trying to please Dad, and that was even after he died. I suppose for me, it was some kind of transference of my understanding of my earthly father, and I laid it on my heavenly Father. I'll even say that's what most of us do. We have some kind of tangled hardwiring in our brains that transfers our earthly image of our father to our heavenly Father.

One of the first sermons I heard after I became a believer was about the fatherhood of God and the love God had for me. That sermon meant a great deal to me and was the beginning of my distinguishing between my two fathers. It took a long time to separate them, but it was the beginning.

But beyond realizing that God loved me, I pulled along things from childhood. I wasn't my dad's favorite. Mel, the special one, could ask for anything and get it - and the rest of us knew that/ If I asked for anything, I rarely received it.

The first few times I asked for and received what I wanted from Dad was when I begged repeatedly and he finally gave in. After I became a believer, tat was the way I related to God. My heavenly Father didn't give freely, and I had to importune (a nicer word than "beg") until I felt assured of a positive response.

Along with that, because I didn't feel Dad loved me, I spent and inordinate amount of energy trying to prove that I was worth loving. I did it by achieving good grades and succeeding in my work.

On an unconscious level, that's how I related to God. If I wanted something, I had to prove to God that I needed something and was worthy of receiving it. I often opened my spiritual resume and pleaded.

• "I teach Sunday School every week."
• "I'm head of the early morning ushering program."
• "I give generously to our church."
• "I give to other charitable groups."
• "I help other writers.

I took a long time for me to realize that God loves me and wants to bless my life, and not because of anything I've done or would do. It took years before I realized I couldn't do anything to force God to love me more. Because God's love is everlasting and he had loved me from all eternity, how could it possibly increase? How could I find any more favor with God? What I had to learn was that the generous, ever-loving God was already reaching out to me with unsearchable, inexpressible love. I'm not the center of the world, but I'm the center of God's love. God's provisions are based on unconditional love, not on my faithfulness.

All this is to say that I'll never be able to make God love me more than he does. It's impossible because he already loves me perfectly.

 It's impossible for God to love  me more tomorrow than he loves me today.

          

Reprinted with permission from Cecil Murphey.