This book is seriously rocking my world. And I am only on chapter 3, but my eyes are being opened more with every page I turn.
"In the name of hating sin, the Pharisees ended up hating sinners."
"Jesus didn't care about the scandal, he cared about the scandalous."
"Maybe my sins aren't as obvious, but they are just as real. And had I been born in different circumstances, I cringe to think who I would be, what I would have done, whom I would have hurt."
I suck at life, no doubt. No, I'm not a rapist or a murderer but I suck. And a lot of times I catch myself looking down on others who suck worse. I somehow drift into the Pharisee mindset without even noticing it, even though I sin as well. Why do I have the right to look down on someone "worse than me" when I am the one who decided whats "worse" in the first place? Jesus never gave us a list of sins from best to worst. I made up my own. And you made up your own. And society made up it's own. And that is what we use to judge people with. Jesus, though, didn't make up his own. He views sin as sin and that's just that.
At one point in the book he asks the question, "If Jesus could say just one thing to you right now, what would it be?" He then says how most people would expect correction or rebuke. When I tried to answer this question, purposely trying to avoid making my answer be correction or rebuke, I answered with something that would've been correction. Like he needed to fix me.
"Stop thinking negatively about yourself."
That was my first thought of what he would say to me. This might not really seem like correction as much as "stop cheating on your wife" or "stop looking at porn" or whatever some might think theirs would be, but it's still a correction. No, I'm not saying thats the only thing I do wrong, but that's the first thing that came to my mind. At first, I didn't even notice that it was correction, I just thought it would make sense for him to not want me to think negatively about myself because he created me. He knit me together in my mother's womb. He thinks I'm more beautiful than words can describe and I constantly tear myself down. All of that is true, and because that is true, I realized that he wouldn't try to fix me if he could say one thing to me right now, he would remind me.
"I love you more than you'll ever comprehend. You are so beautiful and wonderful and I created you that way, you are mine."
Jesus loves me just the way I am. He loves me even when I suck at life and he loves me even though my thighs aren't as firm as I want them to be. And he loves you the same way. He doesn't only love you when you overcome your battles, He loves you through them.
"Jesus loves us right now, just as we are. He isn't standing aloof, yelling at us to climb out of our pits and clean ourselves up so we can be worthy of him. He is wading waist-deep into the muck of life, weeping with the broken, rescuing the lost, and healing the sick."
If we could realize that this is the way Jesus loves us, that his love is what he wants us to focus on, then we wouldn't view each other so harshly. We would stop tearing each other down. We would stop tearing ourselves down. We would stop focusing on people's sins and start focusing on the fact that we are loved by Jesus just as we are, and so is everyone else. Instead of going out of our way to point out what someone is doing wrong, maybe we should spend more time focusing on what they're doing right. I've come to learn that encouragement is a great tool. Sometimes that's all it takes. One time I posted on Facebook about when I told my little sister that she was great at painting. She had been talking about how she wasn't good at it so I decided to let her know that I thought she was great at it. A few minutes later she said, "Wow, I am great at painting, I think I will be a painter when I grow up!" Then we talked about how she could teach other people how to paint. Now she is a world famous artist who does art shows for a living and makes millions of dollars. Here is some of her work:
So, maybe she's not really making millions of dollars with her art, but she's only 6 years old. Maybe one day she will be. That first picture is on my fridge and I wouldn't trade it for a million dollars so that's pretty much the same thing. But you get my point, encouragement goes a long way. Love goes a long way. So moral of the blog, Jesus is a lot of things. He is grace. He is life. He is my creator, my father, my best friend, my healer, the list goes on. But the one that's sticking out to me the most in the very few first chapters of this book is that Jesus is Love. And love is a beautiful thing. <3
"And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31
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