I am resting with the lord today. I must say that I have refused to do this all semester. And a lot has stemmed from that. A lack of writing. An abundance of stress. Bitterness. Self condemnation. Just being generally unhealthy from going too hard, too long and not for the lord. My praise in confessing this in a public way is that his strength is made perfect in weakness and his grace is sufficient for me. He came to meet with me today. The power in that last sentence floors me.
How lord? How when I have held back from you, ran towards other things, held my idols and let them hold me, will you come so lovingly, so tenderly and meet with me again? How is it that you offer me the same delightful, gorgeous promises of the word when I have been faithless and angry and so far from you? So far that I was becoming numb. That I began to lose sight to separate the sin resting in my mind and heart and thoughts from the truth. And you come. Not just a little. You pour love on me like I’m under a waterfall of pure grace. You say come and drink thirsty one.
I have hidden myself in a dark, internal cell where I can keep my sin and cling to it like it will save me but it will pull me to pieces and You come to the cell. You come in. I say, Jesus, you don’t want to come in here. You’re going to get dirty here, this is dirty place. Its dark here. That light that’s exuding from you is hurting my eyes, Jesus. It’s exposing the things I was hiding. And you come in and I look at your eyes and I see compassion in those eyes. There is no trace of disgust in the expression on your face. Only love. You pick me up and you hold me. You just stay and it is the most powerful you could ever do. To come here. To the depth of my sin. The darkest place in my heart. The darkest thoughts laid bare before you. And I am just like Eve, hiding in shame because I found out I was naked and I don’t want to see you now that I know that I am not what you are, that I have refused to love what you love and that I have bound myself to the enemies lies and allowed idols to dwell in the place that is only for you, the Holy One of Israel my Redeemer. I did not come to condemn, your eyes say to me. I came to be condemned with the condemnation you deserve. And as you hold me, a strange thing happens. All that darkness, that stain of sin that covered me starts to get on you, and I see spread the way cancer spreads through cells. And I see fresh pain in your face and marks upon you as you take it on. And as it spreads in you, it decreases in me. But it is not simply decreasing, It is being conquered in my very self, by something far greater, your perfection. My darkness is swallowed up in your light. My sin is destroyed by your beauty and righteousness. All the while, you gather me in your arms and cover me with your wings.
As Ken Gire said, your eyes are so severe yet so loving, so unmasking yet so protecting, so penetrating yet so caressing, so profound yet so intimate, so distant yet so inviting.
Lord, I must be honest and I say that I hide because I don’t want to be seen by you. I need you to know lord, it is not because I don’t love you but because fear that you will not be able to see me and still love me. This is a legitimate fear, because if not for Christ being seen and judged by you after taking on all my sin, there would be no chance we could be together, because I joined the enemy’s side. I took on sin, which is contrary to all that you are. But Christ became sin who knew no sin and now the enemy’s tactic is to keep me from realizing that the work is done and that you see me and proclaim that I am everything that Christ is.
There is a question I ran into today…one that I had an underlined but forgotten because it struck me deeply once again.
Are you too exhausted to run and too scared to rest?
Yes.
Sometimes, the pastor said, we get so worn out with being useful we become useless.
As we are liberated from our own fear, Nelson Mandela said, our presence automatically liberates others. Wow. That is powerful thing. My very presence has the capacity to be liberating when I am liberated. When I am bound, back in the Egypt I was delivered from, secretly worshipping the idols God told me I had to destroy, no matter how much energy I exert I can’t be liberating. Christ alone brings liberation. We only carry Him to people and carry people to Him.
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