life change.

Alright my life changed tonight.

I went to Vintage and heard a speaker but none of that really matters because it was Jesus who just cut me to the heart tonight.

First, Jesus is it. He is our whole life, he is the entire focus of our church, he is everything we are ooking towards and striving for and breathing for. There is nothing else. I used to not want to say that because its really exclusive but that is like getting the cure for cancer and not telling people because fight now there are lots of theories and ways of dealing with it. When I see people seeking life in things that will literally destroy them, how can I just let them do that if I love them? Thats like a mom not stopping her kid from drowning because he chose to fall into the pool. And the biggest thing is, its not like I'm here to tell the gospel in like a minute and check that box. I've got to love them! I've got to get loving the girls in my suite and the Park Scholars and my siblings and my city and my church in a way that only Jesus can. In a way that does not blend in with the rest of my life.

We talked about Jesus heals us and that is the most important thing about us. And the people who will be MOST impacted by our healing are the ones that saw the depth of our brokenness. Because if the man with the withered hand went to a different town and said you're not going to believe what jesus did to my hand they would be like "you're right." but the people in his town, who saw his hand, seeing it healed would change their life. I'v got to go back to the ones who know the depth of my brokenness and say, he healed me. He told me everything I ever did. Jesus says I will lead you to the place you want to go least. The place where you have no hope of living for me. The hardest place for you to love me and to live transformed. For me, and for most of us, thats going to be where we are known, not where no one knows us. Thats our friends and our family. Our co workers. Our home church.

The first place we have to start is the relationships we are already in: This is what we are striving for: to live in a way that when someone asks my mom what Jesus's love is like, she would say, you know how my daughter loves me and cherishes me and respects me? Thats what he's like. Times a million And the person would be amazed and say oh, I never imagined he was that loving and beautiful. Or my friends would say, you know how she lifts me up and is always there and listens and cherishes me? thats the closest thing I can show you to describe Jesus's love. Or if you're married, you know how my husband honors me and calls me beautiful and dies to himself that I may have life and I delight in submission to him? Thats Jesus.

What if we were living like that???

One thing that I hope to pray on everyday is what if Jesus came to us, about to take us to be with him in eternity, and said alright I'll give you twelve more hours, how would you spend those 12 hours?

What if we lived if everyday was like that?  Like its our last chance to love people and to tell them about the one who loves them more then they have ever dared to hope for and to invite them to eternity with us and him?

When I approach the throne I want to be beyond exhausted, able to say, good thing you took me when you did because I would not have made it another day, another hour. To say, Jesus I have nothing left. I gave everything I had. I wasted nothing. We don't have time to mess around. This is it. Its all over the new testament and the old. People pouring their lives out. Letting go of everything else. People having the courage to leave everything they know and people having the courage to not be the person their town has known forever. People dying to themselves. People saying that to live is Christ and to die is gain. PEople realizing that we are broken beyond anything we can even imagine and then knowing that christ more capable to forgive then we are to sin. That we cannot out sin his forgiveness. That when he said it is finished it is our darkest sin that is finished and was finished from before creation and will be finished until the end of eternity.

 That is the gospel we have been entrusted with.