Hi friends!!!
We have been in South Africa for a little more than a week now! We spent the first week resting up at our debrief to ready ourselves for new ministry. I found God teaching me a lot about “child like faith” and what it looks like to really be free in Christ. God was really speaking to me a lot about what it looks like to have fun with God. A lot of unintentional revelation came about these topics – it was real cool. Probably the best one yet sounds really simple, but it’s pretty big. Soooo here we go!!!
First off, there’s a big difference between knowing who Jesus is and actually knowing Jesus. Likewise, there’s a difference between knowing Jesus loves you and knowing the love of Jesus.
When I started to take ownership of my own faith, I moved from knowing who Jesus was to actually knowing Jesus. That was huge. I can’t stress that enough. As a result I have grown a personal and intimate friendship with Christ – but up until a few days ago, I had only known that Jesus loved me. Because of that, I thought Jesus loved me most when I was most obeying him. Not true!!!! I thought that my disobedience made God mad. Also not true!!! It gets stressful when all you want to do is please God, but our human nature is imperfect. It wasn’t until I realized just how much God loved me that my perspective changed.
I began reading a book called “Stuff Christain’s Like”. The book is meant to be more of a joke (it’s actually really funny) but at the end, the author gets pretty real.
This is what I read:
(Read as if this is God speaking)
“What if you struck yourself in the head with a chain every time you felt guilt or ashamed for letting me down? What if you physically punished yourself every time you were not perfect? What if the self abuse was physical and external, instead of mental and internal? Would the scars cry for help? Would the pain you were causing yourself seem cruel and unnecessary? Would your heart break if you watched that person? This is what I see when I see you. My daughter, who told you the crucifixion was not over? “
The author continued on…
“I never realized that by beating myself up, I was putting on a parade of pain before the Lord as a way to enter his presence. And I never really thought about that hurting him. Not because he’s disappointed, but because he loves me.”
This is what God spoke to me:
God doesn’t ask us not to sin because he hates the sin (though he does!!), but more than that, he hates it because he hates what sin does to us. He wants the best for us. So when we sin, he’s not mad, he’s hurt because he hates to see his children get hurt. He wants to turn us in the right direction because he loves us. His patience, grace and merciful power get to shine in our weaknesses here.
Then the author continued on:
“All sins are equal, even if the consequences aren’t. And I think they are equal because God doesn’t make the same distinctions that we do. His mind is not like ours. I think all sins are equal because anything that distracts us from gods purpose for our lives has the same result: we’re missing out on Gods purpose for our lives. He designed us for a special, perfect thing, and when we choose anything other than that, we miss it. The specifics of why we miss it probably matters less than we think. What we miss is what matters. Gods big, crazy gift of love Goes unclaimed for another hour… another day… another year. Whether you decide to ignore it because you were chasing money or relationships or pie or a million other things isn’t that point. You missed the gift, and that’s what God cares about. You missed another day for him to let you know how much he loves you and how important you are. That’s why, even if we don’t believe it sometimes, I think all things are equal.”
When I realized that Gods love for me wasn’t conditional according to my sin – it changed my identity in Christ. Christ doesn’t see me as my failures, but he sees me as his child – not to be hindered by failures. This is why we are called into obedience.
God wants to give you life – that’s why discipline is good. Discipline is choosing to do things that bring life and choosing not to do things that bring death. God wants to discipline you because He loves you and wants you to have true life and true freedom. It steers us towards everything holy, pure, joyful, fulfilling, fun, exciting, tender, gentle, wild, and amazing that God wants to lavish upon us. It steers us away from everything that hurts us, drains us, separates us, saddens us and destroys us. God really really loves us – and that’s where his discipline comes from. He wants this so badly for us that he died for us knowing that we might reject his love completely. The love that cares so much as to steer us in the right direction no matter how much we mess up.
We’re blessed to know this love and to be able to approach God with this full confidence.
I’m excited to let everyone know what our ministry is like here – it’s my favorite yet!
Thank you all for reading!!!!
