Have you ever tried to hug someone to express your love and found that person like a stone or a telephone pole, no responsive hug given back?

Have you ever tried to hug someone to express your love and found that person like a stone or a telephone pole, no responsive hug given back? Maybe as a parent you are concerned about emotional frigidity in your child. This person is like a statue, no response to you.

Welcome to God's "club"! This is His problem with the human race--massive alienation. We are born separated from Him; "the carnal mind is enmity against God," which is "death" (Rom 8:7, 6). We can go from our cradle to our grave in coldness and aloneness. God Himself tries in a myriad of ways to "hug" us, but we don't know how to hug Him back. It's a problem!

We are described in Hebrews 2:14, 15 as "children ... who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." Ever since sin invaded planet earth with the fall of Adam and Eve, God has wrestled with this most serious problem He has ever faced. He is handicapped in that He cannot force anyone. He has to obey the rules, to stand back; a human heart can only be "won." All He can do is "hug" us and keep hoping that somehow His love can get through, and those barriers will come down. It's like waiting for a whole new creation, and that is precisely what it is: "Henceforth ... if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things [coldness] are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2 Cor. 5:17, 18).

Here we catch a glimpse of Christ as our great High Priest in the Most Holy Apartment of the heavenly sanctuary--working night and day to woo us, to win us. When you hug someone you try to look in his/her eyes, to "hug" with your eyes, to say, "I love you" that way, hoping you can arouse something warm in response, hoping to provoke some little response of a choice, "Yes, I choose to respond; I don't know how, but I choose to be reconciled to you." When that happens, how happy you are! Welcome to the Most Holy Apartment of Christ's heavenly sanctuary!

You can sympathize with Him as He wrestles with His problem worldwide. But don't give up on Him. He has resources to accomplish His objective. But the struggle is intense. If He fails to win the heart of His Bride-to-be, to melt that icy coldness in Laodicea, He will be forever pained and humiliated.