Miracle of Easter

Today i heard someone mumble a bit. This person mumbled about “having  broken all of the Lord’s commandments” and “i am not able to ever reconcile with God”. The next thing this person mumbled, was a speaking out loud of  the first verse of Psalm 23, which happened to lay open before him: “Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd”.

The thing that stood out to me, was, that indeed this person was right.

We are not able to ever reconcile with God.

We are not able to reconcile with God.

Not when it comes to us doing something to make it right with Him.

But it’s not about us trying to do everything we can to change our past, our behavior, ourselves.

It’s about what’s already been done for us.

It’s about what the Lord chose to do, so He could reconcile with us.

This is a truth i have known for quite some time now as i grew up with the Bible and going to church. And i believe lots of us Christians ‘know’ this truth.

Especially now in the week before Easter, i hope we all are hearing the Gospel and how Christ paid our debt. How forgiveness isn’t something we do, but something He did. Yes, He already did set me free from sin. On the cross Jesus Christ paid my debt in full. He paid the prize for my past mistakes and also for my future failures.

i know this and still, i haven’t been able to fully grasp it.

i need to know that i know that i know

that forgiveness of my sin isn’t something i need to do, but something HE DID.

Accepting the gift of forgiveness also doesn’t mean that you have to be 100% sure you won’t ever make the same mistake again.

However i believed that to be true. And so i could not (and still have a hard time to) ask for & accept forgiveness if there was a chance of messing things up again.

It still is oh so hard for me to grasp this. For i am so afraid of exploiting God’s grace. i guess i have been taken at heart the warning to not continue in sin so that grace may abound (Romans 6:1-2). But here in Romans 6 it’s about consciously, deciding to continue to live in sin in order to get more grace from the Lord. That’s not the same as asking for forgiveness, and slipping up again.

i find comfort in Jesus’ last hours on the cross.

As He was hanging there He was mocked. Matthew 27 talks about both the thieves that were crucified with Him, were reviling Him, just as the other people were (Matthew 27:38-44). Luke 23 speaks of only one robber mocking our Lord Jesus (Luke 23:39). Whether or not the second thief mocked Christ, it doesn’t really change much to what i found very encouraging here.

The thing is, the second thief was hanging on the cross with Jesus. He was a sinner. He was convicted for a crime, and he speaks of “indeed justly receiving the due reward of his deeds” (Luke 23:41).

But there’s more to it. This man, this criminal, he recognizes Jesus for who He is. He confesses his sin and he humbly yet boldly asks our Lord, Jesus Christ, if He would remember him when He comes into His Kingdom (Luke 23:42).

You see, this man didn’t have any chance of doing things better in his life. He had no more time to do things right, to ask for forgiveness to those he had wronged. He was about to die in just a couple of hours.

Yet here he calls upon the Lord and Jesus hears his cry and He replies:

“Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43)

So even when there’s no hope of us ever being able to quit sinning, to stop our destructive behavior, we still may go to Jesus, repent our sins to Him (which means to turn away from our sins, and look up to our Lord Jesus and what He has done for us so we are now able to go freely to Him and live our life in communion with the Lord our God), ask for forgiveness and live as a new creation in Christ: old things have passed away and all things become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).

i am learning and you may too, that:

my sins are not simply covered, but they are removed from me..

Taken so far from me, that there is no way that they can be considered a part of me, anymore (Paslms 103:12).

And not only did God chose to forget our sins, but He also wants us to forget them as well. He wants us to draw near to Him with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, being sprinkled clean from an evil conscience (Hebrews 10:22).

Please keep in mind that to me it’s still a journey. But i hope and pray that sharing this part of my journey, will somehow encourage you to cry out to Jesus also, no matter what is going on in your life. For He is the One and Only who has made it possible for you to live in the presence of the Lord.

Because the Blood of Christ was shed for you and for me, we are let go as if we have never sinned (Matthew 26:28).

Have a very blessed Easter!

lyrics to "You Are More" by Tenth Avenue North

Jesus thought of you, above all

 “You lived to die 

rejected and alone

(…)

You took the fall

and thought of me

Above all”

 (from Michael W. Smith’s song Above All)

  

To me it has always been a mystery how the Lord could possibly spend even one second thinking about me..

Psalms 40 verse 5 says: 

“Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders which You have done, and Your thoughts toward us; there is none to compare with You if i would declare and speak of them, they would be too numerous to count”

and Psalms 139 verse 17:

“How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them”.

Psalms 144 verse 3 asks the question which i can relate to, very much “O Lord, what is man, that You take knowledge of him? Or the son of man, that You think of him?”

Yeah, i wonder: who am i that the Lord thinks about me?

There’s a LOT to say about this question, but for now i just want to leave it be, as i wanted to write about something the Lord revealed to me this evening, at the sing-in held by the church i attend.

While singing the Dutch version of the song Above All by Michael W. Smith, it really stood out to me that while hanging on the cross, the Lord thought of me. Above all things Christ Jesus could have thought about, like the loneliness He experienced, the humility of hanging there, the intense pain from the beatings He endured, the crown of thorns which was forced into His head and severely irritating the nerves in His head. He didn’t spent His last thoughts on the people that were doing this to Him, He didn’t searched the corners of His mind to find the most horrible curses to  express His hate against the ones that were murdering Him.

Jesus had lots of things to think about, lots of reasons to be bitter and spent His last thoughts on the situation He was in right there, hanging at the cross.

Jesus didn’t look at His circumstances.

He looked further.

He looked beyond the cross, beyond the pain, beyond the humiliation, beyond the loneliness.

He thought about you and He thought about me.

i have spent so many years trying to shrink myself. Trying to become smaller. Quieter. Less sensitive. Less opinionated. Less needy. Less me. And to be honest i still spend a lot of time and energy trying to shrink myself. So i felt quite uncomfortable with the idea of the Lord thinking about me. Let alone spending His very last thoughts before He died a horrible death, on me.

When someone is looking my way, i always automatically screen myself “am i doing nothing wrong?”, “am i not standing in their way?” and so on. And so i thought about Jesus thinking of me, while He was dying. What would He think? What would He see?

i used to sing this song by Michael W. Smith quite a lot and always assumed Jesus would be thinking about how much He loved us, me. And that He would look at us as being one of His people.

Today i realized (and i strongly feel it was the Lord revealing something to me) Jesus wasn’t looking at a photograph of me. He wasn’t holding a frame with a picture of my baptism, or me kneeling down at my confession of faith. Nor was He seeing a picture of me at a praise concert, lifting my arms up to glorify His name. He also wasn't seeing a picture of me folding my hands to pray.

Jesus didn’t think about us in fragmented ways. He sees us as we are. When He thinks about us, He fully knows who we are.

When the Lord is thinking about us with precious thoughts (see Psalms 139:17), He is thinking about ALL that we are. He sees us at our strongest, our happiest, our best, our kindest, our funniest, our highs, but also at our lows, our weakest, our saddest, our worst, our ugliest, our darkest, our most hateful and bitter-filled days. He sees us when we are having faith strong enough to move a mountain, but also when we sit in our deepest & darkest pit.

Jesus died on that cross so that we could be whole. So that we could come to Him, just as we are – the best and the worst of our being – we don’t have to pretend.

In His presence it is safe to confess your sins, to lay down your hurt, your fears, your shame, before Him. He will not say that He died for you because of who you try to be. No. He is not deceived by the person you may portray to be. 

He knows who you are, deep down in your core, and He still decided you were worth dying for. But He didn’t quit there. He thought you were worth dying AND LIVING for. And living is what He wants for you, too. Living in freedom. Surrounded by His healing presence.

Please don’t try and leave a bit of darkness, that may be inside you, out of His sight. He already knows and He is ready to shine His light upon your darkness, not to crush you with His anger, not to leave you to wrestle with the darkness on your own, but to amaze you with His everlasting & unconditional love.

Text from the song "Arms Wide Open" by Misty Edwards

Original picture from http://lifepalette.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/love-cross-upside-down1.jpg

You gotta know God can handle your honesty

Sorry i haven’t been writing earlier. i really did not know what to write about.

my goal is to share something that is encouraging, thought provoking or uplifting or just good for a laugh. Lately i have been wrestling with a couple of things and i could not think of anything worth sharing with anyone, here on my blog.

When i listened to Mandisa’s song “Just Cry” this sentence got me thinking..

You gotta know God can handle your honesty

i really felt like that would be something i wanted to share with others.

No idea if i could write a whole blog post about it.

Maybe i can’t. It’ll just have to be a shortie then :)

God can handle your honesty

He can handle my honesty

Honesty - The quality of being honest

Honest - Free of deceit; truthful and sincere

i often times feel the need to sugarcoat my thoughts and feelings.

Maybe even my hesitation to write a new blog post because what i had to write wasn’t ‘uplifting or encouraging or joyful’ enough.. is a display of not being completely honest. i don’t think i need to be completely honest on this blog. It’s okay to keep certain things to myself. i just don’t think i would be doing anyone a favor by “displaying” all my thoughts and feelings here on this blog. Everyone has their own battles, the good or bad, the happy or sad.

There’s no need to bombard you with mine.

i don’t try to say we all should bottle things up inside and hide our true selves. Not at all.

i just mean it’s healthy and natural to be selective in what you do and don’t share with other people.

And i pray everyone has at least one or two people in their lives who they are comfortable enough to share important aspects of their lives with. For we never were created to go through live on our own.

Still it is important to have people in your life who you can share the important stuff with.

Though in human relationships it is important and healthy to set boundaries and make choices in what you wish to share and keep for yourself.. It’s a whole different story when it comes down to our relationship with the Lord.

We don’t have to be selective in our prayers.

He doesn’t want us to sugarcoat our thoughts and feelings for Him.

It’s no use doing so, since He sees the depths of our hearts anyway (Psalm 139)

Us, human beings, simply can’t handle to always know all of the (ugly) details about the numerous battles we humans face while living on Earth. We need to be selective in what we share and with whom, in order to protect ourselves and others. We simply cannot carry the weight of the world.

Sometimes when spending time with the Lord, praying, i catch myself trying to protect Him too.

It sometimes gets so naturally to keep the hard stuff, the real stuff, outside of my prayers.

But Mandisa is right, putting me straight:

the Lord is perfectly capable of dealing with my honesty.

He can handle my raw feelings and thoughts.

He doesn’t need me to sugarcoat any single one of them.

Truth is, He already knows every single one of them.

But He waits on me to give Him all of me.

He waits on me to surrender myself to Him.

He wants all of me.

The good, the bad

the happy, the sad

the dark, the light

all day, all night.

He wants all of me.

He wants all of you.

And He wants you to know that He can handle your honesty