This quote is taken from the blog of Dave Hasz from his post on Feb. 27, 2006 (Blog has since gone down)
Tonight in the Honor Academy I am going to share a message out of Hebrews and tell the interns how delighted God is over them. They are so Godly, and filled with Faith, I know the Father is rejoicing over them tonight. I am going to tell them how joyful He is over them! I say to all of you out there around the world who are filled with Faith tonight, who are loving the Father and making others Glad in Him – God loves you sooooo much and is rejoicing over you. Read Heb. 11 – 12 tonight and feel God’s love for you.
Wow, this is so disturbing I don’t even know where to begin. The clear implication from this post is that God is delighted over people BECAUSE they are godly and filled with faith. This is a total and complete perversion of the Gospel. Paul would be appalled – and in fact wrote the book of Galatians to counter act this kind of thinking.
Attention former interns: God’s love for you is not dependent on your performance. It’s not even dependent on whether or not you believe in Him or follow Him. God loves you because He made you. He delights in you because you are His creation.
Ephesians 2: 4-5
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions–it is by grace you have been saved.
Zephaniah 3:17
The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.
9 COMMENTS
Anonymous | June 26, 2009 at 5:29 pm | Replyread Christianity in Crisis. it may help what you are trying to exopose- admin | June 26, 2009 at 6:00 pm | ReplyThanks for the suggestion – I’ll look into it.I’d love to talk to you about your experience with TM. I won’t reveal your identity. Email me at recoveringalumni at hotmail dot com.
Keely | December 4, 2009 at 7:11 pm | Reply“The clear implication from this post is that God is delighted over people BECAUSE they are godly and filled with faith.”So…God shouldn’t be delighted when His children are doing His will? I’ve failed enough and not followed through enough to know that His love and delight for me is not measured by my actions…however, I’m having a hard time seeing why God wouldn’t delight even more with those who delight themselves in Him. I don’t mean a favoritism thing. That goes for anyone who is really pursuing Him, not just “HA-charged” interns/alumni.- admin | December 4, 2009 at 7:32 pm | ReplyKeely,What you are saying makes sense from a human standpoint…but part of the astounding grace of God is that we can do NOTHING to earn more points with Him.The reverse of what you are saying is that if we are less “spiritual” or “godly” then He does not love us or delight in us as much. Does that ring true to you?To be honest, this isn’t something I totally grasp yet, but I want to. We become more godly, more like Jesus by resting in His love for us and letting it flow through us to others, not by working it up and then getting his blessing. Does that make sense?There is a podcast I’ve linked to on the side called “The God Journey.” They tackle this thing quite a bit and you might find it helpful, as I have.
- Anonymous | December 8, 2009 at 11:20 am | ReplyI kind of feel that this is taken out of context. Just like your blog is geared toward those who are “recovering” from time at the Honor Academy, maybe the blogger you mentioned felt that the word he had on that particular night was more for those who DO delight in the Lord.That is not to say that God does not love all of His children, or only loves those who “try to earn His love”. Maybe that bit of encouragement was meant more for those particular individuals. That’s not necesarily bad or wrong… just like you are reaching out to those who you feel need to hear what you say. Not everyone is in the same boat, and can relate, and that’s fine. Maybe that’s just what God was speaking to him at that time.Who are we to tear apart what the Lord is speaking to someone else just because we don’t feel that that particular sentiment applies to us or some others around us? Maybe there was one of God’s children who really needed to hear that encouragement at that time.Love in Christ,
Marissa - admin | December 8, 2009 at 4:57 pm | ReplyMarissa,With all due respect, I don’t think you can speak to Dave’s motives, teachings or patterns since you haven’t been to the internship. I’m not picking out isolated incidents to critique. I’m choosing teachings that are WIDESPREAD and repeated throughout the year.Nearly any intern who has been out for a year or more will tell you that they feel God’s love for them is dependent on their spiritual performance. That is the fruit of this program.
Anonymous | December 10, 2009 at 11:52 pm | ReplyInteresting… so my response to your post above was not allowed? It seems to be missing from the site, yet I don’t think I really said anything inappropriate. All I did was politely disagree.Marissa- admin | December 11, 2009 at 1:25 am | ReplyMarissa – I didn’t see anything. Sometimes you have to click “post comment” a 2nd time.
- Anonymous | April 18, 2010 at 5:52 am | ReplyI would just like to say that God is love so He can’t do anything but love. It is the Holy Spirit’s job to lead every believer into all truth. God loves the WORLD (john 3:16) that is why he gave his life.I would say that there is a division of belief about eternal security and being able to lose your salvation. Christians who believe that you can lose your salvation base their Christianity on works and not true grace. Christians who believe in eternal security believe that salvation is a gift from God and don’t believe you have to work for it.Depending upon which side of the coin the believer falls on, that is how they will teach others. Some people don’t understand grace, love and mercy. You will hear them preach about God’s judgments and hell, fire and brimstone.I am not making an argument for sin, that would be immaturity. I love the Lord so my love for him should provoke me to want to please and obey him.I do however know that there is no one righteous except Christ and he doesn’t fully repay us for our sins. If he did we would all be dead. There are consequences for sin. People think that if you don’t have sex, drink, smoke, etc. you are covered. There’s more to it than that. God judges the heart. If you don’t have love in your heart and you aren’t watching how you treat people, the other stuff doesn’t mean anything.That is why there are so many self-righteous Christians. They believe they are right before God and have no need of repentance. We have to have our hearts searched daily. We will be constantly transformed until we die or until Christ comes back.You have some Christians who are trying to live under the law and grace. That’s impossible. The law is more than the 10 commandments. There are 621 jewish laws that had to be upheld and if you broke one you broke them all and it was punishable by death. The law provokes sin.Grace leads to repentance. Christ said that if we don’t love others than we are liars and the love of God is not in us.I want to leave by saying Jesus said I will sum up the law and the prophets to this, that ye love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and that ye love your neighbor as yourself.If we love we have fulfilled the law of graceblessings.
