This was my first birthday away from my family and loved ones and we have some pretty great birthday traditions in my family… So you can understand when I tell you that I wasn’t looking forward to being away from my family and loved ones for my birthday this year. However, this year, I received one of the greatest, if not the greatest birthday gift ever: the voice of God. I was doing some quiet time reading and praying and I was reading in Romans 11 when God gave me something huge. He reminded me of three things throughout the passage that I was reading, the third thing being the most simply profound of the three. First, he reminded me in verse six that if I am trying too hard to do works that “earn me favor” then what’s the purpose of grace? Secondly, he reminded me in verse 23 of the same passage that “…God is able to graft them in again.” This spoke to me in reference to when I screw up, when I am cut off, God is so easily able to graft me right back into his kingdom as if I had never even left. He can do it with branches on an olive tree, so how much more would he do it for me?!!
The last thing that God reminded me of is so awesome, and honestly the purpose of this blog because I think it is that simply profound. It comes a few verses back in verse 18 of Romans 11 where it says: You do not support the root, but the root supports you.” Did you catch that? I really hope that other people struggle with this, otherwise this is all in vain, but God really spoke to me through this passage and said this “You can never let me down, because you were never holding me up.” Wow. Read that again. We can’t fail God, we can’t ‘let Him down’ because that implies that at some point we were holding Him up in one sense or another. God’s self-esteem, His worth, His confidence is not wrapped up into whether or not I do good enough in living for Him. God awesome because he’s GOD! So you see, it would be silly to think that we held God up in any sense. How freeing is that?! We don’t have to worry about holding up the God of the universe, and that he doesn’t expect us to. He just loves us. He loves us wholly, perfectly and unconditionally. In fact, there is no other relationship we will ever be in where someone could love us more wholly, more perfectly and more unconditionally than the way that God loves us. So this is the birthday gift that God gave me, rest, great friends away from home and a still small voiced but very powerful reminder of his love for me. Thank you, Jesus!
