run
ropes this time
song?
the song of my soul tonight
sing it out
left of me, make it a melody
sing out loud
the words to sing
remedy
with what’s left of me
sun
ghost this time
you gone?
breath in my lungs tonight
sing it out
left of me, make it a melody
sing out loud
the words to sing
remedy
song
with what’s left of me
on, I’m holding on to you
wrong
lie that’s come true
in love with the ones that run me through
along all I need is You.”
gonna lie, it’s been a tough month. Ministry has been awesome. Our team has
become more cohesive. I have a roof over my head and food on the table.
internally, it’s been a struggle.
I’ve had
doubts about everything, from leadership to relationships (platonic, of course. Calm down Mom and sisters, I know I got your hopes up there) to my spiritual life,
my motives, and who I really am at the core.
If you just
glazed over the lyrics above, please read them again. I’ve been living off this
song for the past few days, and it basically outlines my spiritual journey this
month.
But this
short exert from J.I. Packer’s book “Knowing God” is what really turned my
month around:
“What
matters supremely is not the fact that I know God, but the fact that He knows me. I am graven on the palms of
His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His
sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him because He first knew me, and continues
to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment
when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment,
therefore, when His care falters.
“There is
tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at
every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now
can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about
myself, and quench His determination to bless me.”
I am
disillusioned about myself all the time. I see myself as weak, inadequate,
incompetent, uncaring, and lazy … and that’s the short list. But God knows the
worst about me … thoughts and motives that have never crossed my mind because I
focus on my most blatant evils and shortcomings.
And yet He
still loves me. So much that He allowed His own son to suffer the punishment I
deserve.
1 John 4:19
says, “We love because He first loved us.” God loved us before we were even
born, with the full knowledge of every sin (large or miniscule) we would commit
during our lifetime. So there is nothing we can do to alter His infinite love
for us.
It is easy
to be disillusioned about ourselves, but God is never disillusioned about us.
He never sees me as a failure, no matter what I believe or what others around
me might say. And if God is for me, no one (not even myself) can be against me.
