If you’ve been drawn to this specific blog post, then I can safely assume that you’re struggling with feeling accepted and loved by God.
Take my brief quiz to identify your top challenge in this area AND receive a breakthrough strategy.

For a lot of my ladies, they’ve been raised - or led to believe - that God is very judgmental.
The Oxford definition of judgmental is: “having or displaying an excessively critical point of view.”
The picture you currently have of God is one where He’s constantly looking for things to criticize you for.
That is not a loving God. That’s not someone you can feel safe with; or trust; or forge a healthy relationship with; or feel completely accepted and loved.
Yet that’s exactly the kind of God you’re yearning for, right?
Friend, the good news is that your desire isn’t wrong. Your heart has been aching for a truly loving God because that’s who He really is!
You just need someone to give a genuine biblical understanding of God’s character.

Mercy is when God withholds something from us that we rightly deserve.
Example: God made clothing for Adam and Eve after the Fall when they suddenly felt shameful for being naked.

Adam and Eve had just betrayed God. They’d sinned. They’d ignored and defied His clear and honest communication about not eating from the Tree of Knowledge & Good and Evil.
Yet God, in His mercy, made clothing for them so that they no longer felt shameful. Technically speaking, this was not something they deserved.
But because mercy is one of His character traits, God reacted with empathy and love rather rather than leaving them in the circumstances that they’d created.
He also showed mercy by making them leave the Garden of Eden.
Genesis 3:22-24 (NLT) says: “Then the Lord God said, “Look, the human beings have become like us, knowing both good and evil. What if they reach out, take fruit from the tree of life, and eat it? Then they will live forever!” So the Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. After sending them out, the Lord God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”
God kept Adam and Eve from eating from the Tree of Life so that they (and the rest of humanity) wouldn’t forever be stuck in a sinful state - and therefore also eternally separated from Him.

Common Grace: This includes things that everyone can enjoy whether someone is in a relationship with God or His enemy. For example, the beauty of nature. The earth’s production of food to eat. Modern medicine and technology.
Grace to Strength Us & Help Us Overcome: For example, Isaiah 40:31 (NLT) says, “But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.” There are numerous verses - and examples in the Bible - of God strengthening and upholding His people.
Forgiveness of Sins: This is the biggest example of God’s grace and mercy.

Disobeyed the specific, clearly communicated rule that God had put in place for their well-being.
Choose to be like God rather than respect God. (Which is what they did by choosing to eat the apple.)
Drastically and negatively impacted the world for the billions of people that would come after them.

It would be fair for God to judge that all humans (as we are all sinners) exist in a sinful state and face eternal separation from Him as a just consequence.
But God is love. And He’s gracious and merciful.
So instead of leaving humanity to the fate we deserved, He sent Jesus - His one and only Son - to be born into humanity and die in our place, for our sins, so that by believing in Jesus and His sacrifice for us and seeking forgiveness, we are seen as sinless and clean before God. (Thereby removing the eternal separation.)

John 3:16-17 (NLT) says, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” [Emphasis mine.]

Ephesians 2:4-5 (NLT) says: “But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!)”

If God was the harsh, critical, judgmental God that you’ve been led to believe, He certainly wouldn’t have sent Jesus to:

Preach and teach (and show God’s love, grace, and mercy in the process by speaking truth, healing people, etc.).
Have Him be painfully tortured and murdered by the Jews, His own people.
Experience immense pain and suffering.

Note: Jesus was both human and divine (being part of the Trinity), so despite this tough calling, these are all things that Jesus willingly endured.

In John 15:13 (NLT), Jesus says, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
This verse doesn’t mean that sacrificing our physical life is the only way to “lay it down.” But in Jesus’ case, this was exactly what He did.

Sending Jesus to die for our sins - which included enduring God’s holy wrath on the cross which is what we deserved, not Him - is the act of an extremely loving, gracious, and merciful God.
God didn’t just throw up His hands, grumble, and leave us to the fate we had created and justifiably deserved. Instead, He withheld what we did deserve and gave us what we didn’t.
Because that’s the kind of God He really is.