Come As You Are

God made the world and everything in it. He made heaven and earth. He does not live in temples built by human hands, nor is he served by human hands. He is a God who needs nothing (but desires a relationship with us). He gives breath to our lungs, life to our body and everything else. From one man God made the nations, that they may inhabit the whole earth. He marked out our appointed time in history and the boundaries of our lands so we would seek him, reach for him, and find him, though he is never far away from us.

We live and move and have our very being in him (because of his grace). We are his offspring. (Offspring of the one and only Holy God). As offspring we should not think that he is like silver and gold or stone - an image made by human design and skill. God once overlooked our ignorance but now he commands ALL people to repent. God has set a day he that he will judge the world by the man he has appointed, (Jesus Christ). He declared this promise when he raised Jesus from dead.

Friends, there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God. There are consequences to our sin but you need to know deep in your heart that there is no sin that is too bad, and no choice that can’t be redeemed. There are not levels of sin, although in our humanness we would like to qualify sin into categories or hierarchy. It is hard to fathom that some of the atrocities we see and experience in this broken world are no different in the eyes of God than the sin in our own lives.

Yet there is a God who is waiting in great anticipation to welcome you

with open arms just as you are.

This notion that we have to clean up our life before we approach the throne is a lie from the devil. It is a trick he uses to try to convince us that we are not worthy of God’s grace until we clean up our act. God says, “come as you are and let me cleanse you by the blood of the Lamb. My son, the Lamb, who I sacrificed on the cross for your mess so you may have life eternal.”

Come as you are friend.

There is no broken or mistake that God can not redeem.

He brings beauty from ashes when we repent. Even the ashes you and I create when we rebel and fall short.

Much love,

Chrissy

Reference NIV Bible: Acts 17:24-31

Photo Credit: Mikail Duran, Unsplash

Wrestling With Forgiveness

Forgiveness is hard.  It is especially hard when it calls for us to forgive people that left deep wounds on our heart.  Wounds that may still be so very raw.

These past four years have challenged me to dig deeper into the practice of forgiving. What I noticed was that as I was walking through the layers of hurt and forgiveness, I began to try to find logical reasons of justification for the actions of the people who hurt me.  My heart and my head just could not take the intense pain of the reality that people I loved immensely would destroy our relationship and in the process shatter my heart for personal gain and self centered motivation.

I wrestled with God over releasing these relationships. I wrestled with my heart and tried to find any and all justification for their behavior. 

What God has taught me through this season is that I do not have to find reasons of justification for the actions of people that hurt me. I am not always called to reconcile those relationships but I am called to forgive.

In hindsight, I can see where God was removing these people for my protection.  Protection from the things that live in the dark recesses of their hearts.  God began to show me over and over again patterns of behavior in these people that should have been a glaring beacon of warning for what was to come.  What He knew about me was that I would continue to throw down the door stopper every time he tried to remove them if their hearts were not revealed in a way that I couldn’t justify their behavior anymore.

Forgiveness does not excuse the behavior of those that have wounded us.  Forgiveness releases control back to God allowing him to bring about justice. It also releases untold blessings on our own life when we choose to forgive and allows God to fill the space of hurt with immeasurably more than we could ever ask for.

Friends, I am not minimizing the hurt you may be walking through. I am not justifying or excusing the behaviors of the person that hurt you.  I just want to remind you that God calls us to forgive just as He has forgiven us.  His ways are higher. Revenge is His alone.  Releasing those that hurt us through forgiveness releases them to God so that He can make things right.

Releasing those that hurt us through forgiveness opens the doors for Gods blessings on our life and makes us whole again. We regain control of who we are and whose we are.  Forgiveness means those that came to kill, steal and destroy no longer have the power to do so in your life.

Much Love,

Chrissy