Back to Blogging... ?

It has been a while since I've written. Perhaps I will take up the pen once more... or the typing keyboard as the case may be. To reflect. To listen. To remember. To live life more fully...

More than anything in this world, my heart longs to know God more. To never give up the pursuit of the One who has pursued me for eternity. Before the foundations of the world, God knew me. God knew just how sinful and selfish I would be, and yet He still chose to create me and to love me. Jesus Christ died for my sins -- past, present, and future-- and turned away God's just anger from me. Jesus rose from the dead, restoring hope so that I could be made completely perfect and blameless. When God sees me now, He doesn't see my sin. He sees the perfect life of Jesus who lived the life I couldn't live, died the death I deserved, and now lives eternally - as I will! I am so glad that God has not given me what I deserve - I deserved death and hell, and yet God has given me life and eternity with Him!

It does seem that God continues to keep teaching me the same things over and over again: Cease striving. Remain in Christ. Trust in the all-sufficiency of Christ alone. Rest. Love. Let go. Press on to know the Lord. Be still. Run with all you've got. Work according to the power of God's Spirit within you. Don't be anxious. Believe the gospel. Preach the gospel to yourself, and keep preaching it - for in it is life.

Yet so often I live in fear, am plagued by self-doubt, and don't really believe this good news applies to the details of my life. The hardest work of all is to simply believe the gospel. To believe that God loves us. To receive that love and to stop trying to earn it. It is a gift. It is a scandelous gospel - freedom from the pressure to perform, freedom from duty, and freedom to fail. Freedom to be unrecognized, freedom to die to self, freedom to live for others. It is a call to come to the end of one's self-efforts, and to trust the Holy Spirit to do what we cannot. And at the end of the day to realize that knowing Jesus really is enough. Everything in life is uncertain except for this one fact: God is who God is, and God is good. I can trust Him.