What's Been Underground for More than Three Days.
The church I had been to only once before felt surprisingly like home this particular Sunday. Maybe it was because I was with my awesome cousin (shout out to Noah Starr a.k.a. the spice of my life) or because the unfamiliar faces were smiling and not probing at the new-comer that was me. Either way, my cousin and I settled into a pew a few rows removed from the high school section (is that a thing at church? Apparently.) and tried to sing along to new and catchy worship songs.
The freedom that I felt to sing wrong notes, make awkward eye contact with smiling strangers, and keep my eyes open when the preacher prayed to take in the scene was strangely parallel to the message of freedom in the sermon that day.
Here’s the story: as soon as I heard that the sermon was going to be on “Jesus Before Pontius Pilate,” I wanted to nap.
“I could probably preach this one by now” I thought as I got comfortable and started checking out everyone’s outfits for new spring fashions.
The preacher stood behind the podium, read a crazy long passage of Luke, and the next thing I knew the lights dimmed and all our eyes were caught by a video on the projector screen.
The video is called “Jesus is Loving Barabbas” and is an amazing presentation of The Gospel. The preacher expounded on some ideas from the video found in Scripture and inside me the Holy Spirit was making new connections that I had never thought of before.
I grabbed my iPhone—and with thumbs fast and furious—tried to note the heart change that was taking place inside of me.
Maybe the reason why this particular “Jesus Before Pontius Pilate” sermon did something in my heart is because this time I didn’t decide to nap. I actually paid attention and heard The Gospel.
After the service I was so excited that I texted some of my friends my notes from church #thingschristiansdo and wanted so badly to shake a stranger by the shoulders and say, “Please let me introduce you to JESUS!!!”
Me, Myself, and I understood The Gospel more solidly than ever that Sunday. The freedom that I felt as I walked into the sanctuary was the perfect set up for the Lord to pour even more freedom and joy into my life.
You see dear friends, there’s a crucial piece to the Gospel that I never really latched onto. I figured it out eventually, but only after many a heartbreak.
Here it is:
GOD IS AWESOME.
Indeed. Sorry not sorry if that's an anticlimactic truth for you.
But for me, it was the truth that had been spinning around my head for years waiting for my heart to open its door so it could penetrate, permeate, and empower me.
For some reason, along the way I had missed that God Himself is worth wanting just for who He is and not for what He does.
Have others missed this? Have those of you who thought that that truth to be anticlimactic truly received it into your heart? Or is Jesus just not that likable still?
Church, Sunday school, teachers, friends, worship music, and family have all said these phrases to me:
“He will save you from your sins so you can go to Heaven!”
“He will give you wisdom and joy when you accept Jesus’ sacrifice!”
“Christ washed away our sins! Hallelujiah!”
“Our God is mighty to save!”
“Great is our God for He takes away the sins of the world!”
“He loves us so much!”
Why do I care that my sins have been washed away? Why should Heaven be so special to me? Yippee that God is mighty and loving to save us…
I care because God is awesome and I want to know Him!
For us to live wisely isn’t why Jesus died.
He died so we could know Him!
Or, in the trendy Christian lingo, so we could be bros.
Christians, our biggest challenge is to believe The Gospel. To believe that a perfect God requires nothing of us but faith and that He gives us full access to Him.
Our biggest challenge isn’t being disciplined enough.
It isn’t being devoted enough.
It isn’t feeling lowly and guilty and shameful enough.
It isn’t becoming holy enough.
It isn’t having enough Bible verses memorized.
It isn’t reading our Bible enough.
It isn’t being modest enough.
It isn’t respecting our authorities enough.
It isn’t being enough.
We can never be enough so let’s all do what’s good for us and stop trying.
While we can’t be good enough: we can believe. That’s why God gave us that as our task.
Our task is to believe because when God looks at us He sees Jesus and He is already enough.
Now for a series of awesome truths that totally rocked my world and can rock your’s too (What's your favorite?):
1. We are killing ourselves by trying harder. We are denying the life Jesus has offered.
2. We are putting our chains back on when we try. We are living as if Jesus didn’t conquer our sins and we still have some catch-up work to do.
3. We are making the devil smile when we try instead of throwing our chains on Jesus and watching Him hold them off of us for eternity.
4. Jesus holds the intense weight of all our sins with joy because then we can know Him.
5. We need to give Him that joy. Give Him the joy that spurred Him to die for us. The joy that He gets from being in relationship with us.
6. He doesn’t even feel the weight of our sins. He is that strong.
7. Our celebration of Jesus and nearness to Him is what gives Him the most joy.
8. What gives Him the most joy is when we mess up and run to Him. Not when we don’t mess up!
9. His grace is there because we will always mess up and He wants to be with us anyway.
10. Grace is that we give Him what sucks and He gives us Himself. His embrace, His kiss, His whisper, His tenderness, His glory, His might, His awesomeness, His power, and His joy.
11. Getting Christ is so much better than living out church application after church application.
12. If we spent our time looking at Jesus instead of how scary sin is, we wouldn’t need to be afraid of sin because we would be in love with Jesus and would trust that He looks past our sin.
Let’s just walk towards Jesus and not just away from sin. We will still walk into sin, but, we can see Jesus through the sin and he only sees us walking towards Him.
There is no condemnation, Jesus is awesome, He loves us, and He can’t stand being away from us. That’s why He died.
That’s the ridiculousness of The Gospel.
And that’s what’s been under ground for more than three days and needs to be brought back up to the light.
This Easter, let’s bury our plans to be more devoted and let’s just look at Jesus.