I realize I have lived most of my life blind.
As I look back through an entire lifetime at church and youth group, I see how I completely missed the point of it all.
I lived as a Christian, in a Christian home for 24 years; And yet I still had no idea what my faith was truly about. I had no idea what God was all about.
I see that my faith was equivalent to a list of do’s and don’ts. {a lot of us are stuck in this mentality, don’t you think?} It was a mere standard to which my behavior should measure up to. Christianity meant: do good. don’t sin.
I was motivated in my faith by pure guilt to always do what was right, and not do what was wrong. {so you can imagine the chaos that surfaced in my life when I realized I couldn’t always do right.} My faith was led by condemnation; that God would punish me if I did something on the DO NOT DO list and that my church would be disappointed in me if I spoke about my failures. I lived in a black and white box.
One of the most beautiful pictures that God gave me at the beginning of the year was of the blind receiving sight all throughout scripture. God unfolded before me a display of his relentless pursuit of the broken and blind, to heal and restore their sight. I was one of those blind people.
The picture of my life for the past two years has literally been a process of receiving my sight. And it has been a process of restoring my vision to what faith truly is; to who God truly is. As I have taken a huge leap of faith this year, I have seen God’s holy, perfect nature envelop all that I am, and invade my life on a whole new level.
I am seeing for the first time what God is all about.
And He is all about us.
In the book of Hosea the LORD speaks to his people; “I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them.” {hosea 11:4}
God is after me.
God is after you.
He wants to draw us near…not through guilt. not through condemnation. not through rules.
But through cords of love.
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Before I was fixed on rules and standards of purity and morality simply because that was what I was told to do. {and because I was fixated on those rules…I looked for ways to bend them. Come on now, I can’t be the only here to do that!}
As God has shown up in my life in ways that I simply cannot explain, I want him to invade absolutely every area of my life {including my relationships, my purity, my obedience, my words, my thoughts, my actions…} because I see how my obedience to his commands in those areas leads to tremendous blessing. God has captured my heart so profoundly, so deeply, so precisely, that I cannot ignore the fact that I want him leading of every part of my life.
My motivation for obedience is no longer guilt. My motivation is now expectation and longing to see absolutely every blessing and good thing that God wants to bestow upon me! {blessings that only come from my faithful obedience}
As 1 Peter 2:1-3 says, “Like newborn babies, crave spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.“
God said he would lead us to him in cords of kindness and ties of love, then graciously bend down and feed us. And once we have a taste of the goodness of the Lord, our only response is to crave more! Once you have a taste of God’s goodness, you can’t have anything less. Once you see the mighty work he can do in and through you, it is impossible to desire anything else.
I know what it is to live life blind. To live a life without tasting the goodness of God. I know what it is to be led by cords of guilt.
But now I am led by cords of love. I have tasted how good God is. And I have received sight to finally see who God truly is and how much he passionately loves me. And that makes me crave more.
God doesn’t want us to live blindly. He doesn’t want you to live blindly; tied down by condemnation, fixated and suffocated by rules and guilt.
God is all about you. He is relentlessly pursuing you, desiring more than anything to give you sight.
He wants to draw you to him in love, and show you all of his goodness.
As you experience how good God is and see how faithful he is to those who are faithful to him, your only desire will be to allow God invade more and more of your life; and then it will hit you, you only crave more of him.
