I lied in bed,
holding my bible above me.
I was trying to read it.
It was weird though, because I hadn’t read it in such a long time.
I let my arms fall and pressed my bible firmly against my face as I began to weep.
Like, one of those cries that I didn’t even feel in control of. Ya know?
This is what I had read:
“What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”
Have you ever thought about God’s heart aching?
The measure to which God will go to say “I wanna be with you” is continuing to blow my mind. I believe that his heart aches that we do not choose him. He wants to love us so badly.
He does not FORCE his love upon us; because that would not be love.
He doesn’t shame us because of our past or say “look at what you’ve done, sinner”.
Real love is this-that he saw us in our sin and said, “I love you so much, I’ll give you another way. I won’t let you go”
So he died.
He died so that any sin that’s ever been done or ever will be done could be forgiven.
He died and then rose again so that we could be close to him.
And now he pursues us relentlessly-saying, “child. Please come. I have a place for you here! I love you”. And even when I refuse his love, (because oh my gosh, have i refused it!!) he is patient. He doesn’t give up. He is so willing to just wait and tell me over and over and over again, “I love you”.
Hey, reader of this blog.
Are you tired?
Do you feel done trying to figure things out?
Are you sick and tired of religion telling you all of the bad things you’ve done and making you feel shame?
Maybe it’s true that you’ve been let down a lot by the people around you.
Or maybe you tried to be with God, and then you felt rejected.
Maybe you’ve messed up a lot or have wounds that are too complicated for even YOU to understand.
It might be true that you don’t feel God at all.
Or maybe you believe that God himself has just let you down or left you out to dry.
I promise you,
-I triple pinky promise you-
Jesus wants you so bad.
He was willing to die for you.
He is willing to chase you down.
He is willing to leave a crowd, to get YOU.
He is willing to sit with you and to hear you and listen to you.
God is worth it, and you can trust him. I dare you to trust him!
Literally with every ounce in by being as I type this- I’m saying this to you right now, “I promise you can trust him.”
And more importantly, he promises to love you always.
He is willing.
Are you willing to say yes to him?
***I sang this song awhile back in Guatemala. I remember it was a really hard day. I’d spent the night prior crying out and being like, “God, seriously?!?!”
And then I went to sleep and woke up late the next morning with barely a voice. I went into the pantry (yes. The pantry-I’m weird) and grabbed my guitar and sang this.
I didn’t know that it meant a lot to me when I sang it actually. But now it means a lot to me. It’s super raw, but that’s okay because it really be like that sometimes. And God knows that all to well.
Thanks for reading, thanks for listening!
Sincerely,
Jules
