Yesterday afternoon nine-year-old Jake told me he needed to talk to me “in private.”

“Mom, lately I’ve been struggling with the idea that God is mad with me.”

“Why, sweetheart?”

“Because I haven’t been reading my Bible as much lately, but when I am reading it, I’m doing it so He WON’T be angry with me, so I know my reasons are bad, so I think He’s angry with me.”

Oh, we don’t need a DNA test or even pictures of childbirth (thankfully there are none!) to have proof that this child is MINE!

“Do you think Jesus is mad at you?”

“No.”

“Well, who is Jesus?”

“He’s God.”

We talked about how Colossians tells us that Christ is the exact likeness of God. He is the visible representation of the invisible God. (Colossians 1:16, AMP version). Christ is not different from the Father God. Rather, He reveals Him as He is to us weak, frightened, rebellious (which only makes us more frightened) children. Through Jesus–and because of what Jesus did for us–we can know God and His love for us.

“But what about my reasons for reading the Bible? How can I read it if my reasons aren’t good? How do I make them good?”

Simply more proof that Jake is my son!

Another conversation—about how we can’t make them good, only God can, and He knows full well that we aren’t capable of purely pure motives in the here and now anyway. “We just tell God,” I said. “We tell Him we know that our hearts aren’t right, that we can’t make them right, and we ask Him to help us. Then we do what we know is good and right to do—even with our impure motives—because we trust that God can work good and right out of them.”

It was a joy to have this “private talk” with Jake.

It was also necessary.

Not just for him, but for me.

I needed to be reminded of the Gospel, of Grace.

In preaching the Gospel of God’s marvelous Grace to Jake, I was preaching it to myself.

And I need that—every day.