According to Aristotle, a tragedy is that moment where the hero comes face to face with his true identity, and it is this that we must have to keep from coming to the end with our life wasted. The truest tragedy, defined as most of us understand it - an event or series of events causing great suffering, destruction and distress or a story with a sad and unhappy ending, is for anyone to go through and come to the end of their life either feeling and believing that they are worthless and don't deserve love and goodness or to believe and feel that they are OK and good enough as they are. These may sound like contradictory statements, but they are two sides of the same coin, with the coin being our failure to see and understand our great need for relationship with Daddy.
First, for those on the trashy side of life, no matter what you've done or what has been done to you, you don't have to be hopeless and live life feeling abandoned and orphaned. You are not worthless, and the last thing He who created you wants is for you to discard yourself. I am not talking of suicide, but discarding ourselves as in seeing ourselves of so unworthy of anything that we reject love and go through life, empty, miserable, hopeless and victimized. You are a treasure, precious in God's sight, and His greatest desire is to adopt you and become your Daddy, to shelter you, heal you, restore you and give you a life worth living because He loves you as you are, not as you should be, but He loves you enough not to leave you as you are. He wants this so much that He did everything necessary to make that possible in the life, work, death and resurrection of Jesus so that we wouldn't be burdened by meeting the impossible requirements to be what we should be and can't.
Perhaps the easy part for the poor in spirit, the bankrupt who know that they can't fix themselves and aren't even sure that they are worth saving or fixing is seeing the need. The hard part is seeing and accepting the love of God for them, for us, as I am in this first group (or was before the critical tragedy). But on the other side of the coin we see the opposite. We see those who may think something along the lines of, "Of course God loves me and will accept me. I deserve it. I am a good person. I have done all of this and none of that evil trashy stuff." Because they have some, perhaps even quite a lot, of good in their character, morals, life, etc. they fail to see that they are far short of having enough to pay the final bill. They see themselves as worthy in themselves and so do not see the need they have to be ransomed. They are so comfortable in their gilded cage that they do not realize that they are not free.
At the core of our true nature and identity, all of us, on both sides of the coin, is that we are wonderfully made and have great significance and value to the One who made us, but that we also fall short of perfection and need Him to do the work that will bring us to our full potential of being a beautiful, perfect, complete and unique reflection of His love, beauty and glory. I don't know what it is that will bring you to that place where you see, understand and know that. Rock bottom is at different levels for each of us. Some of us had to walk through the gutters and stench of death and make our beds in hell. Others may only have to see a sunset to glimpse how glorious God is and how much they need relationship with that loving Artist. Whatever it is, that is your tragedy, that moment when you come face to face with the truth of who you are, simultaneously wonderfully worthwhile and in great need of God, combined with the truth of who God is, the One who knows exactly how much you are worth and demonstrated that to us by dying in our place; the One who loves us and who desires and is able to save, heal and transform us into the best us and give us a life worth living. Yes, Dear Reader, I pray you have a tragedy, unless, like me, you already have. In that case, I pray that you have enough reminders, glimpses of tragedy, that you never forget that you are worthy and you are loved, not because of nor in spite of who you are, but totally and completely because of who God is.
This site is free. If this blessed, helped and or informed you, the best thing you can do is pass it on via the social buttons below. And please subscribe or follow Unshackled Life Ministries on Facebook.
Unshackled Life Ministries is grateful for every person that reads the daily Unshackled Moments, the weekly Unshackled Echo and or listens to the Audio Messages. I want to thank those who have clicked "like" on something that blessed or ministered to them on social media, commented on the blog or replied to an email subscription. It is encouraging to know that God is using this ministry to help and bless others. Please remember that if God used something from this ministry to help, encourage or bless you, it could also bless someone else. Would you help get the devotions and sermons to more people by sharing this? Hitting the share button or forwarding this to a friend will help us reach more people with the good news of freedom and the encouragement to live an Unshackled Life. Thank you and God bless.
No comments:
Post a Comment