When God's Love Feels Toxic

Have you ever felt like God is laying it on too hard?

Like:

"Why do I have to be the one with all the problems in the world?"

"Why does everything seem to come easily for other people while I have to fight my way up every single time?"

"Why does God keep asking me to trust Him when trusting Him seems to be the very thing that keeps hurting me?"

"If God really loves me, why does loving Him feel this painful?"

It might be difficult to say, "God's love feels toxic," because it will sound like an accusation against God. After all, we have been taught that God is good, kind and a dependable Father.

So how can His love ever feel toxic?

But honestly, if you were in a human relationship and someone repeatedly subjected you to painful experiences, asked you to surrender things you deeply loved, allowed you to lose what mattered to you, watched you struggle, and kept telling you, "trust me", while others around you seemed to thrive, you might see it as a glaring red flag.

You might walk away.

And sadly, some Christians have. Some people have quietly abandoned their faith because their experience of following God became difficult to reconcile with the God they were told loved them.

While some eventually find their way back, others don't, which is quite heartbreaking.

I think there is something we often miss about God's love that we need to understand, and that's the fact that God's love is not always comfortable.

Sometimes, the most loving thing God can do in our lives will not feel loving while we are experiencing it.

Consider Job, for example.

Job wasn't suffering because of something he had done wrong. The Bible actually introduces him as a man who feared God and lived uprightly. Yet, at a season in his life, almost everything he had was stripped away.

His wealth, his children, his health and his peace were all gone. And the worst part of it all was the silence from God! There was no prior warning from God and no explanations after either.

Can you just imagine being Job?

Imagine praying to God while sitting in ashes, scraping your wounds, grieving your children, and yet heaven seems completely uninterested in explaining your pain.

Job didn't respond with polished Christian clichés.

He asked questions and complained. As much as he trusted God, he still wrestled with the turn of events and wanted answers. At one point, he essentially says, "God, where are You in all of this?" (Job 7)

It's worthy of note that God did not reject Job for asking questions.

We often wrongly think that faith means pretending we are okay when we are not. It's not faithless to ask questions, nor is it disrespectful to God if you voice your pain.

Job teaches us that you can be deeply disappointed with your circumstances without being disqualified from your relationship with God.

You can cry.
You can ask, "Why?"
You can tell God that it hurts.
You can admit that you don't understand Him.

Yes, you can do all that and remain in relationship with Him. Asking questions or voicing your pain doesn't erode your faith in Him.

Then there is David.

He was the worshipper popularly known as a man after God's heart. The psalmist who could write beautiful songs about God's goodness and yet also knew what it felt like to wonder where God was.

When you read some Psalms, you'll discover that David didn't always sound happy with God.

"How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? How long will my enemy be exalted over me?"

—Psalms 13:1-2, NKJV

How long!

David's "how long" enquiry is said four times within two verses of scripture. That is the language of someone who has been waiting for God's intervention much longer than they expected.

David knew what it was like to be anointed and still be hunted.

He knew how it was to be promised a throne and still sleep in caves.

He had a first-hand knowledge of what it meant to be chosen by God and still watch people who hated him prosper.

These were moments when David's circumstances seemed to contradict God's promises, yet David kept coming back.

One of the greatest lessons I believe we can learn from him is this:

Faith isn't the absence of questions, but rather choosing to keep bringing your questions to God.

Then consider Abraham.

God promised Abraham a son, but many years passed without that promise being fulfilled. Those were trying years that seemed as though God had forgotten about His promise to Abraham.

Then the promised son, Isaac, finally came.

He was the evidence that God had kept His word and fulfilled the promise He had made to Abraham.

And then, in one of the most disturbing stories in Scripture, God tells Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice.

Now put yourself in Abraham's shoes.

God wasn't simply saying, "Give me something you own." He was saying:

"Give Me the very thing I promised you. Offer your dearly beloved son to me as a burnt offering"

How do you process that?

How do you reconcile the God who says, "I will build a nation through this child," with the God who now seems to be asking you to surrender the child in death? Death by your own hands!

Abraham didn't have the luxury of God telling him from the start how the story would end. He had to walk up the mountain without knowing what God would do. And that is what faith often looks like.

We want God to explain the entire journey before we take the first step, while He mostly only gives us enough light for the next step.

Abraham discovered something profound on that mountain:

That the God who asks for the sacrifice is also the God who provides the substitute.

God was not trying to destroy His promise.

I believe He was teaching Abraham that the Giver must never become less important than the gift.

Then there's Paul, the Apostle of Jesus.

If anyone could have expected an easier life after giving everything to Jesus, surely it was Paul. Instead, according to the accounts from 2 Corinthians 11, he got:

Frequent imprisonment, beatings, and shipwrecks. He faced frequent rejections from kith and kin, hunger, danger and persecution.

And then there was the mysterious "thorn in the flesh" which Paul prayed repeatedly for God to take away.

God didn't.

At least, not in the way Paul wanted. Instead, God told him, "My grace is sufficient for you."

Just take a moment to think about that.

Paul asked for the removal of a thorn, but God offered sustaining grace.

Paul wanted the pain gone, but God showed him that His presence could sustain him even while the pain remained.

Now, this here, is where our understanding of God's love seems to clash with what it truly means. Most times we think:

"If God loves me, He will remove everything that hurts me."

But Scripture doesn't make that promise!

God can respond to our cries in several different ways:

God can choose to remove the storm, or He can decide to walk us through it.

He can decide to change the situation, or He can choose to change us within the situation.

Our confusion often starts when we measure God's love by how comfortable our lives are. When things are working, we say, "God is good."

When it seems things are falling apart, we begin to wonder whether He has left us. But God's goodness was never dependent on our circumstances.

Jesus Himself was called God's beloved Son, and yet His earthly life included rejection, betrayal, suffering and ultimately, the cross.

So, suffering isn't always evidence that God has stopped loving us.

Suffering is mostly evidence that we live in a broken world. And that within that brokenness, God is doing a work we cannot yet see.

That doesn't make the pain pleasant or mean that we should romanticise suffering.

It doesn't mean every tragedy is something God directly caused. And it certainly doesn't mean we should stay in genuinely abusive human relationships because "God wants me to suffer."

No.

God's love is not an excuse for abuse. His character is not cruel. However, there are seasons when following God hurts because surrender hurts.

Surrendering totally to God isn't often pleasant. It might mean:

Letting go of things we have loved and embraced or allowing Him to redirect our dreams.

There are doors He may close, and seasons He may ask us to wait.

There are versions of ourselves that will have to die so something healthier can live.

And going through the process can feel terrible. So what do we do when God's love feels toxic?

Firstly, don't run away simply because you're hurting.

Instead, go to God with the hurt and tell Him the truth:

"Father, I don't understand this."
"I'm angry."
"I'm tired."
"I don't like what is happening."
"I don't know if I can keep doing this."

God is not intimidated by honest prayers. The Psalms are a proof of that, for they are filled with them.

Your tears do not frighten Him, and your questions do not threaten who He is.

Don't confuse faith with pretending.

If you're tired, confused, or disappointed. If you're sad, sorrowful or angry. Tell it to God. Don't keep quiet about it.

If you're questioning your faith, don't hide it behind religious language.

You don't have to clean up your emotions before coming into God's presence. Bring the mess with you.

Your faith won't lose its voice simply because you bared your heart to God. Baring your heart to Him will give the room needed for Him to strengthen you.

In the garden of Gethsemane, the Lord Jesus bared His heart to God.

"Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine." Then an angel from heaven appeared and strengthened him.

—Luke 22:42-43, NLT

God didn't change the plan after Jesus prayed, but He strengthened Him so He could do what was required of Him.

Our biblical heroes of faith all kept serving and praying while going through trials, and somehow, through all of it, they discovered that the God they couldn't always understand was still the God they could trust.

When God's love doesn't feel like love, that's not the time to turn away from Him. That's the time to look to Him.

Secondly, don't interpret God's love solely through your circumstances.

A bad season can make God look bad, but He isn't.

Pain often distorts perception, and when you're drowning, even the hand reaching toward you can feel like another weight. So don't make permanent conclusions about God's character from temporary circumstances.

Job couldn't see what was happening behind the scenes.

Abraham couldn't see the ram on the mountain, trapped in the bush.

The throne didn't look obvious to David while he was hiding in caves.

Paul couldn't see how his weakness would become part of his testimony.

All of them had to trust God to see His word come through.

You may not understand the story while you're still living in the middle of it. Just choose to trust God and the process.

Thirdly, remember what God has already revealed about Himself.

When you don't understand God's Hand, hold on to His heart.

When you don't understand what He is doing, remember who He is.

When situations begin to make you feel as though God doesn't love you, look back to the cross, where ultimate love was in full displayed

Let your Faith point you to the God who does not watch our suffering from a safe distance, but Who Himself entered our suffering.

"This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin."

—Hebrews 4:15, NLT

Jesus was sorrowful. He wept and prayed in anguish. He was betrayed, rejected, and mocked. He experienced abandonment as He went to the cross.

So when you come to God in the midst of your suffering, you are not praying to a God who has no idea what pain feels like. You are praying to the One who has seen and felt it all.

Sometimes God's love feels toxic because we have mistaken God's love for God's obligation to give us the life we imagined.

We say things like:

"If You love me, give me this."
"If You love me, let this work."
"If You love me, don't let me lose this person."
"If You love me, make my journey easier."

But what if God's greatest love for you isn't giving you the life you planned?

What if His love is leading you into a life you couldn't have imagined?

Abraham couldn't have imagined at first what God would do with his life when he left everything to follow Him.

Joseph couldn't have imagined what God would do with the pit.

David couldn't have imagined what God would do with the cave.

And Job couldn't have imagined how his story would end.

Neither can you.

That's why walking with God could seem difficult. We want to know how it will end before we endure the process. We resist the "middle" experience, but God often asks us to trust Him in the middle.

Don't despise the waiting or reject the pruning.

Don't give up because it feels like you are losing, especially when you have to keep surrendering something you desperately want to keep.

Don't be too quick to call God's silence abandonment.

Don't be too quick to call a difficult season proof that He has forgotten you.

That His hand seems absent doesn't mean His heart isn't with you.

You may not understand why others seem to be receiving effortlessly what you have been praying for desperately.

Don't measure God's love for you by what He does for others. Their journey with God is different from yours.

Your story is your story, and God is still writing it.

So if today you're sitting somewhere in your own version of Job's ashes or David's cave, please don't make a final decision about God in the middle of an unfinished story.

You don't have to understand God's love completely to remain inside it.

Respond to your present situation in faith by saying:

"God, I don't understand what You are doing right now, but I still believe You are good, so I'm staying."

And the love that once felt unbearably heavy may become the very love you look back on and say:

"Now I understand. I am glad I never let go."

Until then, keep walking.