On Grace & Truth

We can only write, preach, or declare what God has already humbled us with. That humility gives us the authority to write, preach, or declare whatever it may be. It is better to listen and obey God than to worry about what other people may think or feel regarding what He has revealed and appointed for us to express.

Jesus, the Word Himself, came to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. He calms our inmost being. He offends us to our core.

We know that real love is rooted in depth, which comes from places that are extremely hard to walk through. Depth is formed in the dark valleys of life. The fantasy instinct is to escape the valleys and pull away from the person, or from God, when they aren’t aligning with the mountain top experience they imagined. The truth is that not every moment of life is good, pleasant, or exciting, and no one, except God, is perfect. There are times and seasons that are extremely painful. But what fantasy fails to tell us is that those moments can be beautiful, too. Choosing to love and trust God by faith through every doubt, fear, loss, trial, or disappointment is beautiful. Choosing to love a person through every season and circumstance of life is also beautiful.

Commitment, selflessness, servanthood, mutual hard-work both individually and as a unit, and choosing the other person again and again, forgiving them again and again, walking with them without walking away, is beautiful. Co-laboring in prayer with the Lord on behalf of the one you love for days, weeks, months, and years, is true manhood, true womanhood. Knowing that we are loved and chosen even when our insecurities, fears, expectations, and sins are exposed is beautiful. Are we willing to love and trust a sovereign God we cannot grasp? Are we willing to love a human-being who will most definitely let us down, who will not live up to the idea we have forged in our heads, who is sinful, flawed, and imperfect? True love, God’s love, does not come by finding the perfect person or precisely the right fit, but by experientially learning to see an imperfect person perfectly, through the eyes of Christ.

Are we willing to learn grace, and fall for truth over fantasy?