And it all started at the cross!
"What is so amazing about the cross" you ask?
Oh, I am so glad to tell you.
It continues to be my newest and bestest discovery.
I am beginning to get it. Give me another 20 years.
I am driving into Charlotte to work these days laughing and crying my way in as He loves on me. I have to compose myself before I enter my work zone lest they all think I am crazy.
My circumstances haven't changed much. Still in a tough spot on many sides but it has less and less effect on my day's any more. I am so loved by God!
Alright, I give.
Here is a small piece of it.
The cross is all the proof I need that I am loved. Circumstances may or may not line up according to my schedule but the cross was where Jesus, because of love so identified with me and my condition and through it broke the power of sin forever over me. Hallelujah!
He became sin, my sin. Like I said before, it wasn't the cross that killed Him. It was my sin and the sin of the whole world. There was no sin in Him. He couldn't die no matter what they threw at Him.
But when He took my sin upon Himself and because of it lost His bearings. He really did lose His bearings. He had never lived one minute of His life outside of His relationship with His Father. The closest thing to it was in the wilderness. But this was a thousand times worse. He could not see His Father. Sin had the same effect on Him that it has on us. It blinded Him of His Father's presence and His truest identity.
When He cried out "My God, My God why have you forsaken me," He was feeling the impact of my sin, the same impact that you and I are so familiar with. I don't want to be presumptuous but I believe in the darkness of that hour He lost His bearings, His truest identity. It felt like God had some how turned His back on Him. The scourging, the nails in His feet and hands, the crown of thorns and the rejection He was experiencing from the sneering mob were terrible but nothing compared to the isolation, loneliness and abandonment He felt in that moment from His Father. I believe it was in that crushing moment, when He became my sin and the sin of the whole world.
Even though it were not true. Even though the Father was in Christ at that moment reconciling the world to Himself, from His perspective there was not a shred of evidence that it were true. Sin had so blinded His eyes that He felt not an iota of the love that was in the room.
The Father had not left for even an instant. Scripture is clear on that. God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit were identifying with us in our sinful state and through it providing the act that for all of creation would allow us to become friends with God. This was the plan of the ages. The culminating focal point in all of history. When Adam and Eve sinned Father, Son and Holy Spirit already knew what our redemption would cost them.
Marred beyond recognition, He exactly represented for all to see the marring that sin had produced in you and me. Sin had so destroyed our truest identity and on the cross He mirrored our depravity. Then in the midst of the horror he also experienced the lostness that is the dilemma of every man and woman born since Adam and Eve. "My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?"
And in that moment of complete darkness, on your and my behalf He chose to entrust Himself to the Father. "Father into your hands I commit my spirit." "I still BELIEVE, I still BELIEVE, I still BELIEVE." And then he died.
And in that moment the power of sin was broken.
Paul writes, "It is no longer I that live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I live in this flesh, I now live by the Faith OF the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
LaughOutLoud...Go ahead!
We now get to live form His Faith. When yours and mine runs out, when we feel pressed in by life and circumstances take a good look at the Faith of Jesus. We now get to live off His Faith in His darkest moment.
"How blessed we are at the end of our rope, for when we are at the end of our rope there is less of me so there can be more of Him."
And how blessed to no longer be living my life with a consciousness of sin. Really I mean it! This is the miracle that I am beginning to enjoy every day and how cool it is.
HE LOVES ME!
Thank you Jesus!
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