Jesus is for you. When he promised that he had a plan for your life, that promise holds more wieight than anything anyone has ever told you. I've been struggling since September with what to do this summer, and last night it came into stunning clarity. I had been so upset by constant prayers and all the time I "wasted" considering and pursing different options. I just didn't understand why it wasn't clear. But I kept praying. And my mom (who is definitely one of the wisest people I know) kept saying maybe you just don't know yet. You'll know. Which is the most frustrating thing to hear because I kept thinking, no I won't. What if I never feel at peace about it? If I was to know, wouldn't I have known by now, as we approach April? Most of my friends had summers worked out and flights booked months ago. Then last night it was clear. And because I had been praying and wrestling and looking at Scripture and wondering, I knew. And if God cares enough to have a plan for me this summer, you better believe that he has a plan for your life. Waiting sucks. But the reward of waiting is sweeter than honey. I had been thinking it was such a waste but nothing is wasted with God. This experience has taught me something very new about waiting on the Lord, about discernment from the Spirit, and has given me this confidence to say to anyone I meet that Jesus is for them. That there is nothing to fear because he is the only thing that matters. It is quite important that we discover and embrace the fact that life for Jesus is really really hard. But there is no alternative that compares to the sweetness, the beauty, the quenching, the community of life in Christ. He will care for you. He will do more with your life than you can ask or imagine. Evangelism has such negative connotations, and I think it is rooted in the fact that we as humans made it a goal in itself and a competition and a way to make ourselves great. But that was never what it was supposed to be about. Disciples of Christ never have evangelism as a goal. The only goal is to press into Jesus. Nothing else matters. You tell people because you love them so much that you want them to know Him more than you want anything else. You love people regardless of how they feel about him or about you because he is crazy about them, and the more you press into Him, the more you fall in love with them and see them as he does.
Jesus is better than anything else. He loves you better than anyone else. He knows you. The mountains will literally dissolve before his steadfast love departs from you. He has called you his bride, and made us his people. Not because of the way we acted but because of who he is.
He would rather die than live without you.
So come to the water. He knows that you are thirsty. You can say that you are not, oh, how many times I have tried to tell him that I am not thirsty as I anxiously sought everything that looked like a stream becoming more and more dehydrated. But we as a people are thirsty. We are anxious and scared and trying very hard to distract ourselves and to find things we can use to prove to ourselves and everyone else that we are worthwhile.
You're right. You are worthwhile. You have immeasurable worth and value. Not just to people and to this world, but to the King of the Universe. When God looks at you, he sees his Son, who switched places with us. There has never been anything that pleases God the way his Son does.
I'm learning that I identify with the sinners in the bible, not the saints or the angels. Paul's story is my story. I've been persecuting Jesus by pursuing myself and seeking my greatness at all costs. In my humanness, I want to destroy people. Why else would I devalue and stereotype them in my mind? Why else would I talk and think about the things I don't like about them? If I think about my family, I realize how many times I have chosen to use words with the intention of hurting them. Family is hard because we know them the best and therefore have the most power to hurt. But the story does not end there for you or for me. Because JEsus is not like us. He is God. His love is infinite and perfect for his creation. The world tells us were alright, that there is nothing wrong with us. Jesus never says that. Wherever he went, he healed people. That meant acknowledging that they were not healed and they were not alright. We hate being told there is something wrong with us and think we can hide it because most of us are not paralyzed or lepers. But is our brokenness minimized by our ability to deny its existence? What if Jesus had just told everyone they were fine? There is no love in that.
Back to Paul, He says why are you persecuting me? But he does not leave Paul blind on the road or let him continue to destroy himself by destroying others. He says, "You are a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name."
Jesus was for Paul. He is for you.
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
NOTHING will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 8 31-37)
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