Lord, You are all I need. You see when I’m overwhelmed and surrounded. You see me when I fight against my flesh and reach out, or take that step towards faith. You see my hurt and my broken heart. All my wounds are exposed in Your presence, even the ones that seem to get bigger and spread instead of healing. This business of having a soft heart is hazardous, because I feel my heart break on a daily basis. But you bind up the broken-hearted…
You see my son wrestle with demons, resisting Your rescue, clinging to his flesh, fingers worn to the bone with fighting. Wanting so badly to be healed, but kicking against it harder than ever. To see the war for a soul, so sacred but raw, holy but terribly messy, angelic but sin-infested. And the reality of it is enough to turn the stomach of the most war hardened person. There are no rehearsing of lines and perfecting of inflection. This is the battlefield.
A soul held tight in dirty human hands. A shaking, sobbing shell of a boy who won’t let anyone near him. Wanting Jesus, but refusing to say His name. I’m like that sometimes. I want Jesus, but I don’t want to confess my need for Him. To admit weakness.
I think back to my daughters rescue experience years ago. A heart broken over it’s own sin, because a heart is deceitful, who can know it? That early awareness of her sinful helpless state. Sleep lost, eyes sunken, tear-stained little pale face. Eyes as blue as corn flower glistening with pooling tears as she tells me, half yelling, “You don’t know all the things I’ve done!”
We tend to want to think, “What could a four-year-old have done that is so bad?” A testament to our general disregard for and inaccurate view of His holiness.
She saw…and she knew He saw…and then she realized He still wanted her.
I watched on the sidelines as her desperation turned to resignation and then to acceptance of His rescue plan. I watch her live victoriously and her heart break over souls she knows don’t belong to Him yet. She goes a step beyond sympathy, she feels their pain and hurt. She knows what it’s like.
It’s funny how different they are. My boy has always been the happy-go-lucky, go-with-the-flow, “Jesus-is-in-my-heart” kid. But he’s never faced his own need for rescue. He never saw his need until now.
“Faith in God is more that believing the right things. It’s living the right way because you believe the right things.” -Paul David Tripp
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” -Hebrews 11:1
The thing is, sometimes things are ugly and damaged and having faith seems crazy radical. Our ability to look situations and circumstances in the eye and confidently claim God’s promise that “He works all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.”
That, yes, even the darkest, dingiest of circumstances are redeemable.
I look at my son and fight the urge to want to save him myself, my way. To pretend I’m God. To steal His glory and question His goodness. Because my son and I, we can share struggles, we can share feelings, we can share our faults and our hardships, but we do not share a soul. His is very separate from mine and so is his faith in things unseen. Completely separate from and independent of me. And faith, it comes about in such unique ways. At different times. In different seasons.
Our Savior though, He’s the same.
New Mercies 