Why Did God Make Us This Way?
WHY DID GOD MAKE US THIS WAY?
Transcript of a clip from the talk WE WERE MADE FOR LOVE by Rev. Ernest O’Neill.
And so God took dust from the ground and made our bodies and then breathed into our bodies, His Spirit — His spirit life that makes Him alive at this moment and that actually makes us alive. Then the spirit and the body mixed together and produced our soul.
So you remember the way we’ve said it, we’ve said that we were made really just for God’s own love. That’s why He made us — just to enjoy His love. He made us like himself with a spirit like him. You remember last day, I tried to remind you what spirit was because we all get spooky about it and wonder about ghost stories and all kinds of things. Your spirit is you, yourself. What a man is when he is alone or what a woman is when she is alone, that he is and no more.
The spirit is what you really are apart from your wife, apart from your children, and apart from your mom and dad. Your spirit is what you are yourself. It’s your very own self. It’s you. It’s you yourself. That’s your spirit. God gave you a spirit because he is spirit himself. Then he put around your spirit (like two overcoats) your body and your soul. So really we are almost three little overcoats. The outside overcoat is the body and the inside is your soul — which is actually the psychological part of you — it’s your mind and your emotions. Finally, your inside part is your spirit.
God made us that way because He wanted us to have the attributes that he himself has.
You can at times be very spiritual and at times very physical and at times very mental. God made us like that — every one of us. Everybody in this room has a body, a soul and a spirit. Your soul may be more or less dead, your body may be more or less dead, and even your spirit. But every one of us has those indestructible attributes.
But God didn’t give us the inner qualities that make life with Him not only bearable but also enjoyable. He did not give us His own blessedness or happiness. He didn’t give us His own love. He didn’t give us His own liberty of action and free will to do freely what we wanted to do independent of actually what we chose. He didn’t make us in that way perfect like Himself. He gave us these attributes and then He said, “Now I want you to choose the inner spirit that makes me, me. I want you to choose that. If you don’t want to choose that, that’s okay but I give you the attributes, the capacities that I have and then you can decide to receive my character into you or you can decide to reject it.”
And he said, “Really the way I want you to do it is — I want you to trust me. I know why I’ve put you here. I’ve put some of you here to be artists. I put some of you here to be carpenters. I have put some of you here to be secretaries. I have put some of you here to be thinkers and mathematicians. I put some of you here to be housewives. I have put some of you here to be mothers. I have a plan for all of you. Now, actually I want you to get to know me and follow my directions for your life and as you walk hand in hand with me, you’ll begin to know what you should do in this life and I will begin to give you my own character. You will become more and more like me.”
WE WERE MADE FOR LOVE