The movie The Shack has been a recent encouragement to me spiritually. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. I know there’s a lot of doctrinal debate about it, and it will def challenge your concept of God for sure. But how we see God is so often as an Ogre who does what he does out of anger rather than a God who is Love willing to walk with us through the messy, painful, hurting places in our hearts and lives caused by ourselves and others.
If you’ve ever struggled with “religion” and pain and questioning God, even being angry with him, then this movie might hold some answers. (The book is even better, if you’re into reading).
Here’s one BIG thing I took away from the movie and the book: God’s motive is always more closeness to us, not the obliteration of us. Our daily deaths (spiritual), the hardships we face, the pain allowed to us is merely the means to the end for God. And that end, in his eyes, is to GAIN our hearts, and to heal us, not push us away so he can maintain his position as the Big Meanie in the sky.
Just taking time to BE with him can heal so many things in us….
