Yesterday marked the 36th year of my life as a follower of Jesus Christ. It is rather providential that during the past few days, the Lord has been mentoring me with precious insights that I would not have known if it were not for the avenues of pain that cradled it.
I seek to be brief on these jewels for I seek the reader to begin a lavish rush to seek its application benefits.
Pain is the most misunderstood of all our salvation benefits. It comes out real dark and mysterious. It overwhelms like an unremitting storm. The world is no friend to pain and thus we run to our therapeutic-oriented shelters. When we experience pain, we immediately think that something is wrong instead of pausing to recognize the Still Voice that seeks to call us to a deep awareness of succulent freedom.
We are blindsided by our fallen history. We easily forget our propensity to hide behind the bush and cover ourselves with self-devised garb. We see everyone clad in one’s own clothing and panic takes place when we are stripped naked by our Maker, who is forever pursuing us to take His life as the only competent relief for all our shame. We’d rather believe the delusive promises of manipulation rather than seek unbridled sanctification.
God pleads for our humility; we flaunt our vulnerability. There is no one who knows us deeper than Christ. We keep on ignoring this truth in exchange for fleeting moments of made-up spirituality. We need God for every passing hour to redeem us from our death-re-living travesty.
Only God is wise. We contend with His wisdom without even knowing it. He weeps while we keep busy seeking to protect our shattered dignity with every idol that we secretly worship.
We do not know how to truly love others. Humans are too obsessed with themselves to even try. Only Christ shows how it is done. How can one even conceptualize seeking to believe that others are to be esteemed with true worth? Christ did it by dying.
There is no way I can live the life of Christ in me if I am not willing to suffer and die just as my Savior did.
I am now 55 years old and for 36 years, I have done nothing but fail.
It is only by sheer majestic grace that I am held up by Christ’s majestic love and mysteriously declared to be a child of the King.
I am awed by this illogical and irrational love. May we find cover under this unrelenting and stubborn pursuit. Let us all pursue reconciliation just because it is our only hope for true joy.
Cross Fitted Witness