Fairy Tales. We have all heard them. Some of us love them. Some of stumble because of them. We keep waiting on our lives to become the fairy tales we heard as children. I see woman all the time waiting for a knight in shining armor to rescue them from the rut of their routine lives. They "wait" for this man to arrive. Some like to call it a season of waiting. But I recently had a God-given vision that has shaken up everything I ever thought about fairy tales and this dashing knight on a white horse.
Here is the fairy tale you haven't heard.
Once upon today, there was a dungeon built on the foundation of hate, laid with stones of fear. Inside, the deadly beast has you chained in shackles so heavy you can't move. You are paralyzed and all day long this beast taunts you and spits his fiery words of worthlessness at you. He constantly tells you you're not enough, you never will be and that you are not worth fighting for. You are alone and will always be alone. He tells you that you are a product of your sin. That death is your future.
You begin to think his words are truth. The more you listen to him the heavier your load becomes. You can't even stand under the weight of his abuse anymore. You are a helpless child locked in isolation, but you know he will never let you go without you paying a high price. A price you can't afford, so high it will cost your life. You even think this is the end. There is no happy ever after. This is how the story ends. You dying alone under the weight of abuse.
Then one day, when you have completely given up hope that you can be saved, the knight you had forgotten about shows up to rescue you. He doesn't dash in with trumpets and grandeur. Instead, his armor is a blood-stained mess of rags. His crown is not sparkling with jewels and gold. He is wearing a crown of thorns. He is silent as he slips in to the dungeon, walking with quiet strength right past that beast and unlocks your shackles. Just like that. Just that freely and easily he steps in and looses your chains. As you stare in disbelief, you expect him to turn and walk back out of the dungeon to his freedom. You know he has the power to do it. Instead, He bends down to lock your shackles on his own feet. You see him physically picking up the weight of lies and hate that have been hurled at you. He is picking it up in the form of a cross and all the while never breathes a word of complaint. You stand in disbelief as the bondage you had accepted as just part of life is taken from you in an instant. You stand by free while this man who could have just destroyed the castle altogether chooses instead to take your place of shame.
Just as quickly as he freed you, you start to think, "however will I repay this man?" So you stand frozen at the site of your saving. You stand locked in the place he freed you from thinking that you don't deserve to walk out. You stand there not realizing the gift this man has just given you. It isn't until He looks at you with eyes full of grace and says "I love you" that you realize He never expected to be paid back. You know in that instant that even if you tried, no good deed, no act of service will ever repay such a gift. But he did it anyway. When he looks at you, your soul saturated with the purest and deepest love you have ever known, you know the only way to accept such a gift is to walk out those doors with your head held high, past the death-breathing beast and step in to the sunshine of the freedom he bought for you with his own life.
Yall,
This is not a fairy tale. This is truth. This is the truth of Jesus Christ. This is the happily ever after that we have all dreamed about. And it happens right now. It is just as much true now as it ever was and will ever be. His love is this great, this sacrificial, this pure. It won't ever end. Romans 8 tells me "38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 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.
This is the vision the Lord gave me at Transitions retreat "On Mission" this past weekend. It made me weep. The realization that God could have just unlocked the chain. He could have just used His power to set me free, But instead, to overcome the power of death, He took on death. He entered Hell to save me from it. That is a sacrificial, unending, gracious and abundant love like I have never met. In this moment of realization, when Jesus looked at me with those eyes of grace He said "go tell my children what I have done for you." The World Race is my way of running out of that castle to shout what God has done for us.
God took on death so that we can live. Our freedom came at the cost of his life. Yet so many of us are walking around with self-imposed chains. We, in our finite minds, can't grasp that God could really love us this much, past our failures, our shame, our hurt. But He has, can and will. It's time for a lot of Christians to walk in the freedom of LOVE. The openness of life. What a slap in the face to Jesus it must be when He died for us and we, rather than running in to this freedom, weigh ourselves down with worry, fear, loneliness. We shackles ourselves to what if, or when.
Today is the day to let the King rescue you. Run out of that dungeon and don't give that beast another moment of the life Christ bought for you. Live your life to the fullest. This is true worship.
