Today I was sitting at Second Cup drinking a Chai Latte and reading another chapter in Velvet Elvis while my car was having its rear brakes replaced when a thought ran through my mind. What if everything I ever truly wanted is really available in Jesus? And what if that availability is not some future hope, but begins now? What if the only thing stopping me from living in this state of being is my denial of it, my refusal to believe it by refusing to live like it is true? My denial of the completeness of the act of Jesus becoming man and paying every debt I ever owed and erasing every consequence of sin? My insistence that my identity is an incomplete and broken individual instead of a new creation? What would happen if I truly believed and lived like God wanted to dwell with me, here and now, in my present state and that it is totally possible because of Jesus?
I am not talking about hype or utopia or great riches or instantaneous healings and miracles everywhere. I am talking about living in completeness, in companionship with God; where all he is and has is available to me. I, too, am like that older brother in the story of the prodigal son. I live in the same house as a generous, extravagant and compassionate father, yet I feel poor and overlooked and jealous so much of the time. Perhaps because I feel that the only things that can genuinely be called mine must be earned. And that is such a misrepresentation of the character of God.
"The parable ends with the father telling the older son, 'You are always with me and everything I have is yours.' The father wants the older son to know that everything he wants he has always had; there is nothing he could ever do to earn it. The elder son's problem isn't that he doesn't have anything; it's that he has had it all along but refused to trust that it was really true. We cannot earn what we have always had. What we can do is trust that what God keeps insisting about us is actually true." from Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell
I have a new identity. I am holy and complete, in Jesus. God, help my unbelief.
This is a cemetery near Grand Falls, New Brunswick.
Comments
It started me on a new journey of asking for everything I desire, and I don't mean stuff, I mean things like love, acceptance, purpose...God has been answering me in spades. I think the real key is to hold our desires out to him, and keep them out there in trust until we see his answers. Sometimes it is a painful bit of journey to get there, and sometimes a very long time of waiting and holding, and I am still getting there, but I am amazed constantly by how much is for us here now...it sure beats resignation, let me tell you.