Month: October 2022

Real Love

Sometimes I don’t feel like I can sing loud enough, raise my hands high enough, or get low enough on the floor to sufficiently express my love for Jesus. I want to give Him everything… My reputation. My obedience in the secret place. My diligence in daily walking out His plan for my life. Any sacrifice I can make that will feel like the semblance of a worthwhile offering in return for the impact of His unfathomable kindness towards me…

Even with that being true, and feeling it to the core of my being at times, I am continuously reminded of how empty it would all be if that’s how I measured my sense of spiritual well-being or godliness.

I keep being brought back to the simplicity of 1 John 4:10,

“This is real love—not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son…”

I am the object of Love. The recipient. 

He is Lover, I am Beloved. 

My passion and devotion wane, but His fountain never runs dry.

My response to Jesus’ gift of Himself is infinitely inferior to the revealed Love-of-God-in-Christ. It pales in comparison. 

Above all else, I just want to be marked by a growing confidence in this scandalous Love — ever enamored more deeply still in the face of it.

Thinking Aloud Here….

It seems to me that part of the Church has a good grasp on how the Gospel so wonderfully relieves us from the pressure to measure up when we face our ongoing weaknesses and failures, and part of the Church has a good grasp on how radically empowering and transformative the Gospel is. But the two camps seem to only emphasize one of those messages, often downplaying the other side.

One side says we have been declared righteous and made “legally” justified before God — able to draw near to Him to experience compassion no matter how continuously rough and messy our lives are.

The other says we are dead to sin and free from its slavery by virtue of our co-crucifixion with Christ — now needing to learn who we are and discover how to walk in the victory that His finished work provides.

My vision is to disciple people who are firmly and continuously grounded in both realities. I want to see believers reveling in the wonder of God’s mercy towards them everyday — unashamed of their finiteness, woundedness, and capacity to “miss the mark”…. but not ultimately defining their own essential nature (or their expectations for the future) by anything other than who they already are in Christ (Galatians 2:20).