I’m on my way to a mission trip in Tijuana and on the plane ride here, attempted to gas myself up on Jesus so I would be ~spiritually in-tune~ by the time I got to Tijuana. (Even though I should have been spending more time with God this week because I wanted to, not waiting till I got on the plane so I’d be ready for a trip. Smh.)
I think transparency is how you connect with people. I guess I could act like some hyper spiritual Christian guru that never sins, but then how would I be able to relate to people? The bible says we overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony.
Anyways I’ll stop rebuking myself and get to the heart of this message. Ha.
I’ve been reading Tailor Made by Alex Seeley *sidenote: If you struggle with identity, labels, insecurity, purpose / anything normal people battle with– Get. This. Book. It’s amazing!
One chapter in particular stood out to me. She writes, “Our character is developed over time and fashioned by the choices we make. He uses adversity to fashion and mold us into who we were created to be.”
She concludes this section with:
The destination is the process
The more trials that we face, the more Christ-like we become.
Isn’t that the meat of our entire existence here on earth?
To get to know God and to let His love transform us and make us more like Him?
Of course we have desires and dreams, but we do not take those with us when we leave these temporary bodies.
All we take is our spirit.
I think we spend a lot of time chasing the promises instead of the promise giver.
When we do this—when we shift our eyes onto anything that is not the Father, we sell ourselves short. We settle for less.
This is a hard concept to grasp. We long for tangible love or tangible evidence of God. We want to feel him, or maybe we just want simple proof that He exists.
In fact, there is someone reading this right now—there has been a battle in your mind that seems unrelenting. You have no idea what you believe and you have been begging God to reveal himself to you in any way, shape, or form. You are just desperate to find some solid ground to stand on. Something that won’t leave you empty, spent, and heartbroken like every other relationship has left you. Something that will not leave you scarred. Friend, let me tell you right now, there is no rock more stable, no love more steadfast and selfless than the love of Jesus. Than the love of a God who chose you and knew you before you were formed in your mother’s womb (Jeremiah 1:5) who laid down his life so that He could spend eternity with you, lavishing you in His perfect fatherly love that you felt starved from growing up.
Isn’t it amazing how He leaves the 99 for the 1? In Matthew 18, Jesus is speaking to his disciples and uses a parable of sheep to illustrate his heart for the one who feels lost:
“If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.” Matt 18:10-14
He promises to go out of His way for us when we feel unloved, broken, scared, and unwanted. A lie that too many of us believe is, “God is too busy taking care of the rest of the world to worry about my problems.”
Can I be blunt? You’re limiting God. When we think this way, we are doubting His power and His heart.
We tend to see God through the lens of our familial and parental relationships.
If you felt neglected by your parents, it might be easy for you to think of God in this way. Maybe your parents didn’t delight in you. But Psalm 37 says he delights in the details of your life!
He is love, the fabric of the universe is woven together by his speech. I believe He is all around. That He sees you. He knows you. He sees you on your mountain tops, and He sees you when you’ve come home drunk and you stumble into bed crying because you feel like you’ve backslidden again. He sees you in your sweetest, most intimate moments of worship, and when you’re crying on the bathroom floor because you gave your entire heart to someone and they broke it.
There is no best friend, no parent, no sibling that knows you the way He does.
Jesus knew in advance of all the things you hide, even from the ones you are closest with, and He willingly chose to die for you. It didn’t matter to him how dark, how broken, jaded, or evil the heart.
Prayer
God, I thank you for the work that you are already doing in my heart. I ask that you would continue this work in me. Holy Spirit, I invite you into my heart and into my life and ask that you would begin to speak to me. I repent for doubting You, and ask that You would increase my faith and trust in You right now in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Hebrews 3:15
“So today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts as Israel did when they rebelled.”
Songs
For the One – Bethel Music
Come to Me – Jesus Culture