God *Likes* You

"God loves you"

We hear this all the time. You have a little mess up and sin a few times: Don’t worry, go to confession, God loves you. You’re scared of a big event coming up: Don’t be afraid, God loves you. Yes, this is absolutely true, but have you ever stopped to think God likes you?

Father Nathan Cromly, a guest speaker we had at one of our high school retreats, shed a lot of light on this simple little phrase.

God likes you.

It makes you pause, doesn’t it? No one really says “God likes you.” It has a weird ring to it. Some even believe that God loves them abundantly, but doesn’t actually like them.

It’s the mindset we can have on occasion. We say we “love people” but have no intention of liking them or being friends with them, such as that one woman who always sings really loudly and off-key at mass, or your grouchy neighbor, or perhaps one of the in-laws. We think yes, God loves us, but he doesn’t like us.

However, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

God likes you so much that he wants to be your best friend. Think of that kid from your high school days that you always wondered what it would be like to be friends with them. You wanted to hang out with them, have them treat you like a best friend. You’d do everything together.

That’s what God wants.

He wants to do everything with you, even the mundane things, like weekend grocery shopping, or mowing the lawn on a mild summer day.

Sometimes I think that the reason the world is falling away from the church isn’t because they don’t believe that God loves them, it’s that they don’t believe God likes them. God is so infatuated with you, so in awe of you. He wants to be a part of everything you do because he thinks you’re so incredible and worth it.

Or did you forget that he suffered and died on the cross just for you?

Sometimes we think God has to love us because it’s of theological and moral importance, but he wants to love us.

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), paragraph twenty-seven, it says: “For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence.”

Read that again.

His love is what holds us in existence. If God were to stop thinking of you, you would quite literally cease to exist.

He isn’t forced to love you. If he didn’t you would just poof and disappear. He wants to love you and he wants to be with you every single step of the way.

God doesn’t just love you, he likes you too.

YOUR CHALLENGE TODAY: Reflect on the fact that God, the all powerful, all mighty, wants to be friends with you. Have you thought of how hard he worked so he could be in and stay in each and everyone's life? Have you accepted the idea that God wants to be with you at every step of your life? Spend some time in reflection.