When we begin our walk with God, we think that we have so much to learn. So many pages of Scripture to read. So many theological discussions to have. So many different "how-to's" to learn. We spend so much time collecting knowledge that we end up drowning in it.
I'm slowly understanding that there is only one truth. Only one important message for us to hold fast to. The endless applications of this truth only trick us into believing that there is more to learn. But at the end of the day, there is still only the one truth.
This truth is the gospel.
We have all done things to deserve death - a spiritual death - one of eternal separation from God. But Jesus Christ lived the life we could never live and died this death that we all deserve. His substitutionary death paid for our lives. The veil is torn, and nothing can separate us from enjoying a relationship with God both now and forever.
The amazing thing is that Jesus' sacrificial death is a free gift to us all.
This is grace.
Grace is something that I deeply struggle with. I see it revealed to me over and over again in God's Word, and I understand it in my head. I understand it enough to speak it into the lives of those around me, and I understand it enough to be able to show it to them as well.
But I just can't seem to extend it to myself.
The person I was before God called me out of this world was a girl who earned her identity and the love of those around her. I earned my grades in high school. I earned a starter position on the water polo team. I earned my parents love by being a good kid and doing well in school. I earned my friends by doing whatever I needed to do to please them - to get them to like me. Everything in my life was earned.
I was living in a moral economy. Do good, and you'll receive good. Do bad, and good will be stripped from you.
The message that I received from the world was this: love is earned.
But then I encountered Jesus, and He had a very different message to give to me, one that He has not stopped whispering to my heart since the first day I met Him.
He preached to me something that was radical to my soul. He told me that love is not earned, it is given.
Maddie, you can do nothing to deserve My love for you because I have given it to you freely. You have worked for everything in your life, but this is the one thing you never can and never will earn.
This blows my heart and mind, and I can't fully understand it. I feel like it is too good, so good that I can barely get a grasp on it. God loves me. Period. There is no fine print, no strings attached, no exchange rate. It is simply a gift bought for me by Jesus.
I didn't realize how much I was striving to earn God's love until I started this journey of support development. I started this journey believing that if I could just make phone calls and set up appointments that I would get to full support and be on campus full-time in a matter of months.
But I soon found that even the simplest task of making a phone call was too difficult for me. I've had a fear of the phone ever since I was a little girl. My mom would tell me that I could invite a friend over to play if I was brave enough to call them myself. I would dial all the numbers up until the last one, hesitate for a moment, and then quickly hang up. This dialing and hanging up process would go on for hours before I would finally throw in the towel and just settle for being alone than dealing with my fear.
That same fear continued throughout my life and continues today. I thought I would just get over it when starting support raising. But often, I tear up just at the idea of making a single phone call. Forget the fact that I have to make 30 every week. Just the one is enough to send me into a panic.
On top of this, I also found that although I had all the time in the world to raise support, I couldn't will myself to use my time wisely. I dread sitting down to organize my contact list. I dread sitting in front of a phone waiting to be dialed. I dread the mundane administrative tasks that go into support raising.
Netflix is much more fun. Reading a book is much more relaxing. Spending time with the Lord is more important. I'll meet a friend instead of making those phone calls. It is easy to find a long list of things that take precedence over the dreaded phone calls.
I quickly found that my ability was not going to get me fully supported. I could do nothing to earn my wages. My weaknesses and my fears were a stumbling block to my self-righteousness. I could not boast in my efforts because my lack of progress showed that I earned nothing.
For a while, this left me feeling frustrated, and even worse, it left me feeling guilty. I kept saying to myself that I should be able to do this. I should be able to organize my time better. I should be able to dial a phone. I should be able to get to full support. I should be able to do these simple things.
I felt like a horrible person, like a failure. I felt like I was letting people down: my boss, my supervisor, my friends, my mentors, my current supporters. Even worse, I felt like I was letting God down. I felt like I wasn't living up to His calling for my life and that I was failing Him in my inabilities.
As I carried the burden of this guilt, God reached down and reminded me of that single truth once again. In the midst of my guilt and shame, God preached the gospel to me.
I know that you can't do this. But I can.
And you know what I felt in that moment? Not more guilt. Not more shame. Not a greater desire to try harder or be better.
No, I felt freedom.
I felt like I could cease striving. That I could stop working. That I could stop pretending. That I could own up to my imperfections.
Because God is so good, so great, so loving, so incredible. He is all of these things for me.
I am weak, but He is strong. I am flawed, but He is perfect. My effort isn't going to get me to full support - His grace is. Just as my self-righteousness isn't going to save me - His Son is.
God is cleansing me from self-righteousness and self-sufficiency. He is leading me into depths of grace that I didn't even know existed. He is forcing me to be dependent on Him for things that I always thought I could do myself.
This isn't a new truth. It's a deeper layer of the same truth. It's an application of the gospel to another area of my life. I'm realizing that as long as God allows me to remain here on this earth, my life will be nothing but this: endlessly preaching the gospel to myself in every new situation He sets before me.
It keeps me rooted in the one truth. It keeps me remembering why I exist. It reminds me of my hope.
Him.
Jesus.
At the beginning of this journey, I thought that God was going to teach me about how to raise support, how to reach college students, how to do ministry. I thought that support was going to teach me about money, help pay the bills, help challenge others to give.
But as my best friend and roommate wisely put it today, "Support development is about the heart, not the bank account."
This whole journey hasn't been about the ministry or the support development. It has always been about my heart. These things are simply the tools in God's hands that He is using to chisel away at my sin to reveal the masterpiece that is underneath.
God is after my heart. He's after all of our hearts. He is after them to soften them, to change them, to show us just how deep His love is for us.
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.Ephesians 3:14-21
Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for the freedom you have purchased for me, for all of us. Let us never stop preaching this good news to ourselves. Thank you for that one truth goes infinitely deep. Instead of drowning in knowledge, let us drown in the gospel.
Many blessings,
Maddie
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