Life is tough.
Sometimes it is downright chaos.
Sometimes we get lost.
I've been a little lost lately. There are so many things I wanted to write. Many things still left to share from my time in Romania. Pictures to post. I've been back in the States nearly two weeks and where does the time go? People want to hear about my experiences and I don't want to keep it to myself, but sometimes the words won't come.
I came home eager to see my family and make things festively fun for the holidays and enjoy Christmas. Funny thing is,life doesn't stick to my script. I should know that by now. Christmas is all about God with us. But Jesus didn't come to make our lives all warm and cozy and fun,, He didn't come to give us a beautifully constructed holiday celebration, full of tastefully decorated homes, special food, thoughtful gifts, warm fuzzies, happy music, and family harmony. All of these things are great when you have them, and we can give thanks in our enjoyment of them. But they don't make Christmas.
And what about when life gets messy? When fear and faith collide in your soul and it gets ugly? When your eyes begin to open wider to the cosmic war we live in, the war between two kingdoms...and you feel powerless to stand? When hearts are broken and family is complicated and we struggle to understand, to make some connection? When the needs and pressures and work and junk of everyday life keeps piling up and overwhelming you and it's all you can do to keep putting one foot in front of the other?
I'm not writing because I have any answers or some fresh insight to share. I'm writing because I'm full of questions. Because I don't understand. Because I'm just trying to keep my head above water. And trying desperately to cling to the belief that God's plans for me, for all of us, are hope and a good future. Not because life will get easier. Not because we've been promised the answers. Not because we're ever going to feel equal to the task.
Simply because God is here. And He is our hope. He is our future.
We fill ourselves up with so much stuff and think we have it pretty good and it's easy to forget that our only good in life is God. That without Him, we have nothing. We are poor, blind, naked, destitute. Apart from Christ, we are pitiable wretches.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.....
I have done nothing to deserve redemption. Jesus has done everything.
I. Need. Jesus.
The more I travel this life, the less I seem to know. But I know this....I need Him. I don't know it enough. I want to know it more. There is nothing that matters more in this life than to know the one thing John Newton still remembered at the end of his life.....
"I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior."
John Newton has become one of my mentors of late, as I have been reading a wonderful book compiled from his scores of pastoral letters throughout the years of his service to Christ. Newton On The Christian Life by Tony Reinke is a rare, golden gem of a book. This is a bit of a rabbit trail, but if you can get your hands on a copy, I highly recommend the reading. I've read a ton of books, and I don't usually mark them up, but when I had gotten a short way into this one and was compelled to pull out my highlighters and start underlining, I knew this was a special book! John Newton was filled with Godly wisdom, and He clung to the simple power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He wrote letter after letter to friends and those under his spiritual care, encouraging and challenging them in the Christian life. Now his writings are feeding my soul with the rich truths of the Gospel.
I don't know a better way to tie down this wandering post than with another gem of wisdom from the lips of Newton. I quote:
"This is faith: a renouncing of everything we are apt to call our own, and relying wholly upon the blood, righteousness, and intercession of Jesus."
This is profound. This is what I am truly wrestling with right now. To lay down everything I think I am and everything I wish to be and whatever others may think I am and everything else that gives me some sort of merit in my own mind. To lay down all of my efforts to build a better me. To embrace the reality that I will always be wholly insufficient and bankrupt, and to cast myself fully on the all-sufficiency of my Savior Jesus.
He is ALL my righteousness. ALL my wisdom. ALL my sanctification. ALL that is lacking in me. ALL I can never be, never do for God. The Victory I can never win. The Love I can never give. The Fruit I can never produce. It is the power of Christ living in me that will do the impossible. Christ in me, the hope of glory. (Col. 1:27) My only hope of bringing glory to God, now and forever.
So yes, I've been a bit lost. There is so much I can't make sense of. There is the pain of everything that is not what it should be. There is the crush of endless things unsaid, undone, undeveloped, unfinished. But I still have hope. I will let John Newton close for me because he expresses this hope so well....
"I am not what I ought to be; I am not what I want to be; I am not what I hope to be in another world: but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am." -John Newton
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