I Love You This Much!

My girls are now teenagers, but every once in awhile they still play the game, “Do You Know How Much I Love You?” You know that precious game where as parents we respond, “How much?” and our little Delightfuls stretch their arms out as far as they possibly can, responding through squinted eyes and strained heart vocals, “This much”. It never gets old. I love being told that I am not just loved, but loved to the full extent of who they are.

These precious memories are tucked deep within my heart; and there next to the snapshot of my girls’ outstretched arms of love for me, is another snapshot of outstretched arms of love. These arms however, are stretched across a wooden beam and held in place with stakes--Jesus on the cross; the crucifixion. Without a doubt, the cross symbolizes my faith. However, the cross is not just a symbol of a necessary sacrifice for my salvation, but it also symbolizes the pattern I hope my life reflects.

The cross has become so commonplace in our society that what it represents has been gravely skewed or forgotten about all together. I’ll admit that until several years ago when I would see a cross, it did little, if anything, to stir my heart or point my mind to Jesus’ crucifixion on that Golgotha hill over 2,000 years ago. And although it represented my faith, it did not actively serve as a relevant tool in my walk with Christ. The work of the cross had been done and my eyes were (and are) firmly fixed on the One who once hung from those beams, not the beams themselves. However, as I have spent these several years relishing in the friendship and guidance of the Lord, I’ve come to have a whole new appreciation for the symbol of the cross in addition to His Lordship.

Marinating in the heaviness and humble surrender of that Friday afternoon, picturing my friend nailed to those wooden beams, I find that I am drawn to know more about Him. If you believe that Jesus is indeed the Son of God, you know He had the power to escape such excruciating torment and unjust death. As Christians, we believe He not only allowed this to take place, but intentionally sacrificed His life in place for ours—what unfathomable love and grace for us---Perhaps the most profound piece of this equation is that in order to die for us, Christ had to set aside His power.

Maybe that sounds like a no-brainer to you, but I had never reflected on that fact before. Of course, He had to set His power aside. But as we consider what occurred three days later, that Christ rose from the dead, we have a better understanding of what 1 Corinthians 1:18-24 is talking about when it calls our attention to the fact that “Jesus Christ crucified is the power of God and the wisdom of God”. Think about that for a moment. We are not saved because of God’s power. We are saved because He laid His power aside and humbled Himself for our sake. Brennan Manning, author of “The Signature of Jesus (1988) refers to the cross as “The signature of the risen One”. I love that. “The signature of the risen One”. (sigh) That description causes my heart to beat wildly and cry out in gratitude to my Beloved Jesus.

When Christ set His power aside, He was showing His unconditional, inconceivable love for us. Manning reminds us that “power forces us to change. Love moves us to change. Power affects behavior. Love affects the heart”. With this in mind, think about the cross. Do you see Jesus’ suffering love for us? Does it not stir the deepest longings in your heart to be loved this much?

“Christ on the cross is not a mere theological precondition for salvation. It is God’s enduring word to the world, saying, ‘See how much I love you. See how much you must love one another’”. The cross is not just a symbol of my faith anymore; rather, it is a reminder of how much Jesus loves me and how much I am to love the world around me. In Matthew 16:24, Jesus tells us that if we want to be His disciples (Christ followers), we need to “take up our own cross and follow Him”. Essentially, He is saying, “let go of what power and control you think you have and look to me; follow me. I promise I will lead you to the well-spring of life where you will never thirst again”. My mind wanders to the tender words of the Apostle Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Cor. 12:9).

With my own arms outstretched, palms facing toward the heavens, as a symbol of my own sacrifice for Christ, I hold on to nothing, I relinquish all of myself, all of my dreams, plans, and notions about this life to Him and allow Him to lead me. I fully believe that Christ treasures His own snapshots of us, holding them close to His heart and saying, "She loves me thiiiiissss much".

Fear or Faith?

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of sound mind”. 2 Timothy 1:7

I have to be honest and admit that though I have heard these words countless times in my life, even memorized them, I have not taken them to heart and pondered them deeply, until this week. These are words to live by, to hold sacred-- deep within our souls to combat those times when drought, anxiousness, and worry find residency in our hearts and minds. However, I believe most of us don’t readily accept these words. We may even say, “This may be true for him/her, but it is not true for me”. We don’t trust God’s words. Instead we choose, yes choose, to live in fear rather than in faith.

Sitting in a disheveled bedroom, so cluttered that there was nowhere to sit but a small clearing on the floor, I found myself face to face with a tear stained and equally disheveled young girl. It was recently discovered that she had been cutting herself. Feeling completely ill equipped, as this topic was certainly out of my realm of both knowledge and comfortableness; I found myself sharing these very words, though it sounded more like: you have the choice to choose fear or choose faith. When you choose fear, you are clearly saying, “God is not big enough for this situation”.  The girl’s eyes had not made contact with mine for quite some time, but at these words, her eyes shot me a hot and bitter look, as if to say, “That’s not true!”

“That’s not true!” we may say of ourselves when confronted by our own actions. We have a hundred excuses as to why we are in the driver’s seat and Christ is in the passenger’s seat. Somehow we reason that if I just do this or if I just do that, then all will be OK. We may reason that we are helping God or that we need to clean up our lives before we really let Christ take up residency in our heart. Somehow we try to atone for our sins through duty, rather than by repentance.

Because I know so very little about cutting, I found it interesting that this young girl revealed to me that she wanted all the pain and sin to be washed out with the blood. Graphic, I know.  At her words, an image of Jesus’ bruised, bloodied, and broken body on the cross flashed in my mind. I can only speculate that she was attempting to some degree to pay a price for some wrong doing or some injustice that had been done to her.
 
Though not nearly as graphic, we too attempt to find our own salvation or atone for our sins though piling up good works or attempting to living to the letter of the law, rather than to the spirit of the law…payment in some regard for what we have received or to compensate for what we have done. Having accepted Christ into our hearts, we still find ourselves trying to earn something we already have: His acceptance, His unconditional love for us, our eternal salvation.
 
“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives love lives in God, and God in Him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like Him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love”. 1 John 4:16-18.

The silence compressed heavily on my heart and my mind searched rapidly for the right words to say to this young girl, praying for words of wisdom, I found none.  I reached out to touch her, to comfort her, only for my touch to be rejected. A single tear fell down my cheek and my nose begun to run. Hurting, I could not resist the question…”Does cutting really help relieve your pain? Does it make whatever has happened better?” Without looking up, she straightforwardly said, “No, but it might someday and that’s why I keep trying.”

“And that’s why I keep trying”. Her words felt like a trampling of wild horses across my chest. Though her secret had been discovered, she had no intention of stopping. She believed that this ludicrous act would save her, would take away her sins, that causing herself to bleed would somehow bring her the peace she so, so desperately seeks.  I wonder, if we too, “keep trying” to find that fulfillment, that right combination of works and worship in hopes that we would find God’s favor.  Sure, we know we have it already, but our actions reveal that we don’t trust that knowledge. It is, like this young girl, fear-- a lack of trust that drives us to such unnecessary lengths.

The girl, seeing my tears, softened and moved slightly closer to me, though she still resisted my touch. I smiled a toothless smile and as I did, I fell into such a deep weeping that it seemed impossible to stop.  Once composed, I told her that I had good news for her. Looking back on the situation, I am sure she thought I was a lunatic: sobbing uncontrollably one moment and saying I had good news the next. I told her that someone had already shed all His blood for her. And it would only be His, the perfect Lamb of God, whose blood would work to take away our sins and hurt and to replace them with peace and salvation. Because He did this, she did not have to. Her sacrifice would not earn her anything or take anything away. Because as a young girl, she had already accepted Christ as Lord of her life, she already had acceptance, forgiveness, and salvation. Somehow, like we often do, she lost sight of that. She thought she needed to add to what Christ has already done.

At these words, the girl began to cry. Wiping her nose with her shirt, I wondered what she would say. She said nothing, though she did lay her head on my lap. Her journey is far from over. She will need constant reminding that she already has all she needs in Christ. Perhaps, we too need that reminding. I know I do from time to time as it is entirely too easy for me to add to what Christ has already given to me.  Trusting that He is enough is hard.  Trust takes time and commitment to build.  If we are not spending time in intimate fellowship with Christ, we do not know Him and it becomes easy to start living from a place of fear, because fear is our natural state without Christ.

I ended my time with this girl with the question, “Will you choose to live in fear or will you choose to live in faith? It is a choice we all have to make. Our actions will reveal our choice”. No words were spoken as she hugged me tight.  I pray that the Lord would increase my faith, for there are times I question, times I doubt, and certainly times I live life for me and on my own strength. I want more of Him in my life. I desperately want to live according to what I know rather than what I feel.

Without a doubt, life will bring challenges. These challenges do not separate us from God. Fear separates us from God--and "fear in its purest form is really unbelief, the false conviction that God can't, God won"t...so I must. Faith on the other hand, chooses to believe that God can, God wants to, and God will...so I will choose to trust Him with my life." Faith and fear are mutually exclusive. Only one can rule our hearts.