To swim to Jesus

Here’s a revelation I am being reminded of:

GOD DOESN’T JUST LOVE US ON OUR GOOD DAYS. Crazy right? Jesus doesn’t smile and pat us on the back on the days when we are patient and kind and honest and shake his head in disgust when we are bitter and inpatient and afraid.

Logically this makes perfect sense based on the all loving, kind father that we know God is. But sometimes I forget to live out this truth.

When I fail, after I repent and ask for forgiveness, I often hang my head in shame and refuse to meet my Father’s eyes. After a day my head slowly rises as I feel I have beaten myself up for a long enough time.

Letting our circumstances control our emotions is like being on a boat in a storm, with us bobbing up and down with every new trial.

It’s enough to make anyone a little seasick.

We NEED to be anchored in God’s truth. We have to be, there’s no other way.

And the truth? We are loved. God does not condemn us, he convicts us with the intent to quickly forgive and restore us. We need to be constantly aware of the father’s tender heart toward us.

One disciple who knew Jesus’ heart was Peter.

Peter denied Jesus not once but THREE times. There is no denying that he blew it big time. Peter promised that he would lay down his life for Jesus but instead he denied even knowing His savior.

So after the resurrection when Jesus called to the disciples Peter hid behind the others and averted his eyes in shame, right?

Nope. Instead, Peter jumped out of the boat into the cold water and swam all the way to Jesus. I imagine that a dripping wet Peter fell down at Jesus’ feet and threw his arms around him. Because Peter walked with Jesus and had seen firsthand how Jesus LOVES to forgive.

When we sin, when we fail and mess up and fail to measure up, that is when we must jump out of the boat and swim to Jesus. Don’t wait until the boat reaches shore, jump out and get to your savior as quickly as possible! The quicker you get yourself to Jesus, the quicker your reconciliation and redemption and cleansing can happen.

We don’t bring Jesus our good deeds and hope that they outweigh the bad. We bring Him a repentant heart that’s only longing is to be close to Him once more. I don’t want sin or shame to steal one single precious moment of intimacy with my Jesus.

I frequently find myself falling at Jesus’ feet and confessing my great desire to be reconciled to him.

Hebrews 4:16 “Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Like Peter, I too have walked with Jesus and I have seen His mighty hand working powerfully in my life. I have seen with my own two eyes the way that His gracious kindness is quick to forgive my stumbling little heart.

In my life I have seen Him as one who breaks chains. I have seen Him as one who heals. One who redeems. One who restores. One who loves. There is no one who will love you more or better than Jesus. His love brings freedom and wholeness. God is ALWAYS good and we are ALWAYS loved.

 

Romans 8:37-39 “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Trying to fix ourselves

Lately I’ve been feeling tired and cranky and frustrated and overwhelmed and then the other day I suddenly realized what was making me feel that way. I want to please Jesus so much that I often have a tendency to mentally make lists for myself of what I should and shouldn’t do and how I can improve myself.

I tell myself that I need to do this more, do that less, be more like this, and be less like that. And on and on and on until I'm drowning in a sea of unmet expectations of perfection. When I see a Godly Christian woman or hear a sermon about the apostle Paul I think, "I want to be like that." When I look at Jesus I think, “I want to be like that.” And so I try and I try and I try. I determine that I will try really hard and put my best effort in to become the person that I want to be. It becomes, memorize this, read that, listen to this. And while all of those are good things to do, we can't let it become a routine instead of a relationship. 

I like to try to fix myself. But I cant. I can't fix myself. I'm just a human who fails and falls short everyday. Jesus says to me that I don't have to work harder. He tells me to stop striving so hard and just rest in His grace and peace.

He tells me that I can stop trying to be perfect once I realize that I am already loved perfectly.

 I struggle with the lie that I have to prove myself worthy of His love. The truth? I'm not worthy of His love but He loves me anyway and refuses to let me work for it.

A truth that He has revealed to me that I find so beautiful and I hold onto everyday is this: Although I am not fixed, I am loved.

Sanctification doesn't happen by us trying really hard to make ourselves more like Jesus. Sanctification happens when we take all of our junk, all of the pieces where we don't measure up and bring them to the foot of the cross. When we confess to God that we are not yet what we would like to be and ask for His help to change.

Healing begins when we drop our disappointments and unmet expectations at Jesus' feet and refuse to pick them up again.

Healing begins when we acknowledge that we cannot fix ourselves.

They way we become more like Jesus is by abiding in His love and cultivating intimacy with Him. And the way that the intimacy is cultivated will include all of the routine things such as bible reading, prayer, and meditation, but our motives will be different. No longer are our motives to try to fix ourselves, but instead our deepest longing is to be more closely connected to God. Our desire for those things will come out of the overflow of a heart that is saturated in intimacy with God.

It's not wrong to desperately want to be more kind and honest and loving and merciful. But we get ourselves in trouble when we try to do the work on our own. That’s when our relationship with God starts to feel dry and lifeless.

No longer am I going to start my day willing myself to be more loving and patient and then being overcome with frustration and defeat when I fail at being competent all on my own. Instead I am going to start my day by making time to fall more deeply in love with Jesus and let His kindness, goodness, and love flow through me.

I think I'm overdue on some time abiding in Jesus' love, how about you? 

Trusting God

I’m realizing that what is at the root of fear, is trust, or actually a lack of trust.

I’ve always had trust issues. My personality says, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” This le

ads me to seek God, begging to be given greater faith. 

Can I really trust that your plan for my life is better than the one I have for myself?

Can I really trust that your definition of the word, ‘safe’ is not only different than mine, but truly better than mine?

                                                                                                                    

I am a visual person and sometimes it gets hard to believe what I can’t see.

The Lord says, “Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” I want to be that person.

I know God has so much grace for this little heart of mine. So much grace running over these questions, doubts, and fears.

I often find myself apologizing to God for not being perfect. For not having faith to move mountains, for feeling as though I have to protect myself because He wont. Apologizing for the lies I believe.

What I hear God saying to me is, “Oh Katie. Just get out of the boat. Right now I’m not asking you to take a sky diving leap of faith. Just put one foot in front of the other and trust me to lead the way.”

I think trust is a decision. Not so much a feeling as it is a concise decision that you make every single day.

And so I’m going to wake up every morning and make that decision to trust Jesus all over again. To blindly follow Him because He is good and He knows where I’m going.

I said that it gets hard to believe what I can’t see, but there is so much that I can see. I see God’s goodness every day, in His creation and in the people He has surrounded me with. I see His goodness in the redemptive work He has done in my life. I see God in all the things He has done.

While reading the book of Ezra I was impressed by Ezra’s prayer. He thanked the Lord for all the good things He had done for his people and he named them one by one.

I’m sure this was a helpful reminder for Ezra of God’s faithfulness and trustworthiness.

God has been so abundantly faithful in my life and I am putting down some memorial stones. 

The God Who See's Me

Last week I learned a lot about God. I used God’s word to demolish some false truths and beliefs that I had stored up in my head.

I have this unfortunate habit of feeling unworthy to be called Gods child. I doubt that God loves me, despite His constant, reliable reminders that He does.

It seems like God has to hit me over the head to get me to understand.

And God did hit me over the head as I stared up at my ceiling every night and asked the same questions over and over again. I laid out to God the same requests, the same fears, the same hurts that seem to follow me around like shadows. I told God that sometimes I just feel so less than. 

And I heard God saying to me clearly,

“What more could I do to make you understand? What more could I say, what more could I promise? Stop trying to fight for my love when its yours already! Stop trying to earn it! There is absolutely nothing you can do to earn my love. it’s a free gift, accept it. Stop trying to make yourself worthy, stop trying to redeem yourself, that’s my job.”

There are women in the bible who we see God loving so deeply and have so much compassion for. And I read their stories and I feel like I know them.

The woman caught in adultery, instead of condemning her, Jesus has mercy on her. Instead of the woman being the one filled with shame, Jesus turns the shame around on her accusers. He stoops down in the dirt with her!

This story made me realize that God is not high up in the sky looking down at me from some distant place. He is down here with me in my sometimes messy, complicated life. He is always right beside me down here in the dirt. I am not alone because He shoulders my burden.

Hagar. She was a slave, used to bring someone else what they wanted and then abused by the person who had treated her like an object. But the Lord found her! And He asked her where she was going. Of course He knew, but He cared enough to ask. Hagar is a woman who is running away from a life of having such little value and being mistreated so deeply.

God gives her some instructions she might not have wanted to hear, but He also gives her a promise. I always find God’s promises incredibly comforting. He says that He has heard her misery. How wonderful that must have been for her to feel as though no one cares for her and then to learn that God has heard her misery.

I love learning the different names of God and what they mean. I love Jehovah Rapha, The Lord our healer, and Jehovah Shalom, the Lord is peace

But my favorite, the one that means the most to me is Jehovah El Roi. This is the name that Hagar gave to God when He found her in the wilderness.

Jehovah El Roi. He is the God who SEE’S ME. There is something so comforting, so reassuring to know that God sees, and knows, and completely understands every single facet of who I am and where I’ve been. I don’t have to explain myself to Him, and I don’t have to prove myself to Him. I can go to Him with absolutely ANYTHING because He gets it.

I am important to God, I am cherished by Him, treasured by Him. Even though its hard for me to understand this kind of love, I trust that because God says He loves me like that, He absolutely loves me like that. He see’s everything about me and He loves me the same. Is there anything better than being loved by God?

I was cleaning out my room and I found this note that I had written to God months and months ago, pouring out my heart about how I felt about a difficult situation. When I read the last part I had written (below) I was so overwhelmed. In the present I had forgotten the truths that I had written down months before. Now it hangs on my wall so I can read it everyday until it is written on my heart.

He see’s your weariness, and offers His strength
He see’s your feelings of inadequacy, and offers His grace
He see’s your pain and suffers beside you
He see’s your doubt and gives you reason to trust Him
He see’s your worry and anger and offers you peace
He see’s you stumble and helps you back on your feet
He see’s your small steps of obedience and cheers you on.


Song Recommendation: Who You Are by Unspoken

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcgRMJlLCcU