Abiding Life — Broken & Hopeful
So, you accept that Jesus is the way and you invite Him into your life, accepting the complete forgiveness He’s already given for all the ways you’ve tried to do life on your own, and recognizing He makes your spirit alive. In this acceptance, you emerge a new person with access to all the power of the living God who does not ask you to live life by yourself and in your own strength, but provides His through His Life within in the presence of His Spirit. You aren’t trying to prove yourself or do the right things, but rather you are living out the worth that God has already given you. You haven’t earned it, and it can’t be taken away.
Jesus said you have worth, value and meaning, and He wants relationship with you—that’s why He suffered and died to make a way ahead. He beat up death, sin, evil and darkness, freeing us from ever having to serve them. We do choose to serve them sometimes, but we don’t have to—we have another way.
So, how do we live life now? First, you acknowledge that you are loved without having to perform or achieve or do one solitary thing. You have been called a child of God, and He loves you immensely without your achievement. Second, it isn’t about sin. Sin was dealt with on the cross, and is our master no more. Instead, it’s about believing that God will do what He says and recognizing that I can’t do it on my own.
Life for the religious often becomes a hamster wheel of doing “for” God and staying away from the things that might make Him mad. But in doing that, we are missing the point. He wants relationship, not performance. We don’t love others because we’ve decided to love really hard. We love others because He loved us first and that love overflows out of us onto someone else. And the things He tells us not to do are not because He’s going to blast us if we do them, but we start to recognize that they are the places of misery for us. Often these are the things we run to in order to try to feel better about life—substances, people, ministry, image. They aren’t just “bad” things as defined by religion.
Anything that puts you in a place where you are trying to gain acceptance and love based on what you do or don’t do is bad for us. Instead, there’s a sweet dependence of relationship when we wake up and ask Jesus what we are doing today. And when His peace leaves, so do we. We don’t need an explanation, but rather we start to understand that His peace is a guide for our contentment.
How do we know His peace? My friend Mike used to say that you don’t always know when the peace of God comes, but you always know when it leaves. Start to note when your peace leaves. Maybe it’s when you are holding your phone, thinking about reaching out to your dealer or a person who is not good for you and will continue to spiral your life in a direction you don’t want to go. Maybe it’s the overwhelm that sets in when you realize you have committed yourself to yet another “good” thing, hoping that someone will notice what a great Christian you are. There are all sorts of places to find out where your peace leaves.
Once you understand that, you walk away from that place and come back to God in your heart. You recognize there is not life in doing whatever you were going to do, but it was simply idol worship. You are trying to put your life and acceptance in the hands of a crazy person, a place of power, a great trip, an enviable marriage or ministry, or anything else. These can all become idols when we look at them as the definition of ourselves, or as our gods who are to rescue us from our current lives.
Life becomes incredibly simple. We wake up, thank God for being with us and ask Him what He wants us to do today. We are never alone, and He is faithful to empower us for today. Not for tomorrow, or for a week from now, but for today. He brings all His resources to the table—patience, love, wisdom, strength, endurance, gentleness, boldness, faith, and so much more.
We simply need to recognize we can’t do this life on our own (and were never intended to) and ask for Him to be all we need for each moment. And after we run off and do it wrong again, we come back and ask for the same thing again. Each time, we realize there is peace in the place where we are in relationship with Jesus, and we want more. Peace isn’t tied to the circumstance, so it doesn’t mean the world around us feels great. It means that no matter what the situation, we can stay in peace because Jesus is our Peace.
The promise is not that we will avoid suffering or never struggle in this life, but He does promise that He will be with us every step of the way. Why would the God of the universe participate in our lives in such a detailed way? I don’t know. But I think it’s mostly because He loves us. He wants us to take our position as beloved children of God, and walk accordingly. He empowers us to walk—we must simply choose over and over each day to do so.
My old identity has been co-crucified with Christ and no longer lives. And now the essence of this new life is no longer mine, for the Anointed One lives his life through me—we live in union as one! My new life is empowered by the faith of the Son of God who loves me so much that he gave himself for me, dispensing his life into mine! Galatians 2:20
