No sweeter peace has pierced my breast than the realization that Jesus loves me, as I am, (though not to remain in sin,) forever and ever. What eternal security! What depth of mystery! What supernatural love!
A man said to me once that what he wanted most in life was security. He did not "know" God, for he insisted God was unknowable. I can tell you that as a woman, I looked for security in relationships, never finding it, not only because it didn't exist but because I wouldn't allow myself to feel it even if something seemly came along.
Watching the 2010 Olympics was a breakthrough for me as I heard the crowd roar for Canada. I burst into tears, wondering if and when I got to heaven, would I receive this applause too? It was too much for me. I wasn't looking for approval but an eternal welcome, an eternity I could call "home". I was looking for Love.
Then it happened. Someone mentioned to me about the 2012 end of world hype and I googled it, finding there too Christian eschatology. When I hit the wiki link I started reading about the Bride of Christ (the Church). I remember how the Catholic nuns vow to be Christ's brides and devote their lives in service or prayer of some sort. I also remember how I too thought of myself in that way. Then it came. If I am a bride of Christ, and He my Husband, then I must be loved by Him. Jesus loves me! And since Jesus never changes, (Jesus is the same Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) then I have security! Praise God! Let us magnify our worship of Him. For though the mind fights otherwise to inject poisonous doubts and wicked blasphemies into the spirit and heart, that satanic attempt does not stop the truth that Jesus loves us, unconditionally and always.
It has taken me this long, and a useful servant of the Lord, one whom I'll name Sanders, to come to this point. After decades of building my house on the sand, the Lord let it collapse. I was a pretentious, deceptive, cunning and vain thing who only wanted attention. When I realized that I was so screwed up, in my desperation and without knowing how far this was to take me, I prayed that God would help me start all over again. I wanted to be genuine and build my house on the rock. Little did I know where this prayer would take me.
Over two decades of depression and other health issues caused me to come to a point of desperation. After bouts of dysthmic calls to the crisis lines this past year, I decided to stop running. God answered my prayers. Actually he answered it through Sanders. Sanders planted the seed years ago by asking me, "Who is Jesus to you, Vicky? What does the Cross of Calvary mean to you personally? First-person experience, not second-hand knowledge." I was stunned. Even during my feverent years I still ran away from the cross. I'd feel agitated and quite lost and bored whenever the cross was preached. I thought I was a good Christian girl. Really, I was a hypocrite playing as if I were a mature Christian. I wanted shortcuts to maturity. God said, "No."
Satan took full evil of my apostasy. He tormented and attacked me. He demonized me. Christ came to bear our infirmities away, and set us free so we can have life abundantly. Satan comes to steal and destroy. What battle he cannot win, he will take you down with him. But we are more than conquerors through Christ who loves us so. "Be of good cheer, little flock, for I have overcome the world," says Jesus.
I've learned that this life is one of a dress rehersal for the next life. This is a life of faith-building. We're put on this earth for the joy of turning our sight towards Jesus Christ and worshiping him. There is a cost though: the world and the Devil will hate you. Now, we don't mind that the Devil hates us, but our fellow worldlings? The people we used to game with or drink or gossip or shop or sup with? People in high places at school, that very microcosm of society at large that rejects Jesus' authority over them and makes every student find the need to assume there is no God of Jacob and Heavenly Father of Christ Jesus? Those who deny that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Saviour of all humankind but at the very most they accept Him as a historical figure, a deeply revered religious figure? These things, the rejection by the world and the persecution of the saints are the things of the narrow way. Few overcome it. It is like in John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" where the Heavenly Kingdom is walled and pilgrims must rush or "crash" the gate through spear-bearing, arrow-shooting, pebble-slinging, baton-wielding enemies who by their very presence shame and intimidate those not determined enough to make it in. Pilgrims who do not wish to be bruised and are afraid of the taunts and jeers and beatings are unable to pass. But the valiant, the men and women (and children) of great faith put on a helmet (salvation), grab a shield (faith) and a sword (the Word of God)--being buckled with Truth and fleet of foot with the Gospel--they run head first through the enemy territory. Those pilgrims who make it through are bruised and stabbed and wounded, but do not die. They are rewarded inside the walled Heavenly City of God with a thunderous applause and the Heavenly Father saying, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Now come and enter into your rest." That "rest" is the reward of eternal life in all the riches in glory that Jehovah has laid out for those who overcome, be it in life, in death or in the Last Days.
The purpose of life is to learn to enter into that unbroken and unceasing communion with God and the Lord Jesus. In Heaven and on Earth, it is this unbroken and unceasing communion with Christ that truly is the mystery of the meaning of our existence. "Behold, I stand and knock at the door. Whomsoever opens, the Father and the Son shall come into him, and he shall sup with Us and We with him." You know, that is the secret to the New Testament. We all complain about how tough it is to obey Jesus. Yet if we only knew how unfathomably deep and wide and long and high His love is for us, all obedience falls in its place because JESUS LOVES US.
Where there is love, there is no fear. Fear has to do with punishment...Indeed where there is love, the commandments of God are followed as a consequence because the law is now not only written on our minds and hearts, but the perfect love of Christ reigns in us. We are dead to sin as we mortify the misdeeds of the body through surrender to the Cross of Calvary. We obey because like that errant little lamb whose legs were broken to bring to heal on the Shepherd's shoulders, we have learned to love and trust our Lord Jesus. We know He is good and does not change. May we magnify His Glory and bring His Love to every nook and cranny of the world. May His Name be blessed among nations because we love one another and our enemies. May we reconcile our estranged relationships and bring the gospel, the love of Christ, the good news, to all whom we have ever come to know in our lifetime, and to whom we'll ever get to know. May we continue by His Grace to love others and receive His Calvary love.
