Unshackled Moments ~ October 29 ~ Blessed Assurance

Sometimes we hear something so often and or were taught it from our youth that we believe it even though if we stop and think about it we would know that it isn't true, or at least is not completely true. Sometimes we do think it is true, and we would probably guess that we believe it but it has become cliche and meaningless. What am I talking about?

Well, Dear Reader, if I were to ask you what color the sky is what would you say? Most people who are asked that will quickly and without thinking respond blue. And I guess that's true, sometimes. I don't know about you, but I have also seen it red and yellow and orange and pink and purple and grey and even black. Yet we often say the sky is blue with the authority and finality that we say 2+2=4.

And an example for the second part? Well, the greatest truth that exists, which is just as true and just as final but much more important than 2+2=4, has become an empty statement for far too many of us for far too much of  the time. That truth is that Jesus loves me. God, the Creator of me and of heaven and earth, the most powerful Being who ever was, is and ever will be, He really loves me. When we can reach a place where that means more than a motto or a creed we can quote without thinking about it or letting it change us, it actually will change our lives.

There is a song that says Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, and I guess that's a good line. After all, the song has been around a very long time and is pretty accepted by pretty much every denomination as a hymn worth putting in the book. If you can imagine how hard it is to get churches of different denominations to agree on anything, you can understand why I want to say that I am not dissing that song. But I think a much more blessed assurance is that of the great love God has for us, for me. When we can live our lives based on the assurance of that truth it makes everything different.

For one thing we then know, not say we know but know and go through our day like it is true, that we are never alone, that we can't be alone. Therefore we can be without other people around or in a crowd where we don't fit it on belong and don't connect with anyone and not be lonely. When we are sure, in the depths of our soul sure, that Jesus loves me is as real and true as ice is cold and water is wet and oxygen matters, then rejection becomes a the threat of an unloaded weapon.

We don't have to worry about the acceptance of people when we really understand what it means to be accepted by God. The rejection of people, even a person close to us and or important to us, doesn't have to devastate and cripple us emotionally. We don't have to run to destruction to relieve the pressure to fit in and be accepted or to numb or escape the pain of failing. We are loved by God. You are loved by God. It's not empty. It's not cliche. It's not some abstract idea like space being infinite. It is real and true and touchable like the truth that I love my wife except even more true than that, because I can not yet love perfectly with a perfect heart of perfect love all the time because I am not perfect.

Thank you God for your great love for us, for me personally. Thank you for accepting me and loving me as I am and not as I should be, but thank you as well for loving me enough not to leave me as I am but rather to make me like You. I ask that You help me to feel that truth more often and more deeply and to walk in it more constantly. Help me to be unselfish with Your love, acceptance and compassion and be quick to give it away. Amen.




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