Everything We Need

I watched the last two sections from The Bible movie that my friend has been letting me watch, and as always with God it was just at the right time. I had been waiting to watch the next one in the series because I knew it was the crucifixion, and I didn’t want to watch it when I couldn’t give it the full time and attention that it deserves. I also knew I’d need some time for myself because when I watched The Passion of the Christ, I was sobbing from start to finish. Knowing what the Lord did for us – what He did for me and you and everyone individually – makes me recognize my own unworthiness of that sacrifice. I will never fully understand why He would have bothered, and when I see the images of how He suffered I see myself and my everyday nonsense and I just cry and cry and cry.

I spent the first year that I was born again up at the altar of the church I used to go to, face down and weeping every Sunday and sometimes on Tuesdays and Thursdays too. We had prayer night on Tuesday and Bible Study on Thursday and so they weren’t full services, but sometimes I’d still find myself at the altar the way I would be on Sunday morning. At some point during the opening time of worship on Sundays I’d feel like I just had to go up to the altar and kneel before the King. I’d put my arms down on the steps leading up and put my face on my arms and weep. They were tears of release and tears of repentance, tears for the things that had been done to me and things that I had done. Tears for the wasted years and the wasted time, tears for the pain and the loss and the mistakes. But most of all they were tears that recognized His great love, a love that could look past what I knew was a pitiful existence and could lift me up to walk with Him.

Before I watched the movie tonight I was going through my receipts from my thrift store trip yesterday, and I realized that somewhere along the way one of the things I’d bought hadn’t come home with me. I don’t know where it disappeared – it either didn’t get into the bag or it fell out of the bag or maybe even somehow it’s still around here somewhere and I can’t find it for some reason, but whatever happened I’m one item short and it was bothering me because I don’t like it when things like that happen. It was a small shirt and it only cost $1.99, but I always feel like there’s something wrong with wasting money. I kept reminding myself that money gets wasted all the time in ways that we don’t expect, but when there’s something that I could have done about it, it bothers me. Then I watched the Bible movie and everything that was on my mind before that I saw for the distraction that it was. There is really only one important thing and that’s Jesus, and everything else fell into the place where it belonged when I was faced with His truth.

God does want us to have beauty in our lives, He wants us to have joy and pleasure and fulfillment. He wants us to have the things that we need, and He even provides for our wants. But He doesn’t want us to be so fixated on anything in this life that we forget the real source of our life. He wants us to focus on Him so that we know who we are and that everything within us reflects Him.

In Mark 8:36 and Matthew 16:26, Jesus asks the question, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” and we have to remember that always. There are so many things that can take our attention, so many things that can make us think that they are more important than Jesus, so many things that distract us and take our focus away from The One Who Is and Is To Come. (Revelation 4:8)

In Revelation 22:12-14, Jesus says, “Behold, I am coming quickly, and my reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city.” When I compare that vision with somehow losing a shirt, no matter if it cost $1.99 or $199.00, there really is no comparison.

Over the years I’ve lost things and I’ve found things, I’ve had things stolen and had things given. I’ve given great gifts and time and love to people who have not appreciated them, and I have had people give back to me more than I could ever have given to them. There is nothing that I could ever give to God that He has not already given to me, and nothing that I could do for Him that even comes close to the sacrifice He made. His love is greater than any love I’ve ever known, and I can’t repay it or equal it in the giving. But the one thing I can do is to offer all I do have and to say whatever I have is yours. It’s not easy to do and sometimes in my human weakness I try to hold onto something as my own, but Jesus tells us in Matthew 16:25, “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” When I finally let go and give to Him what is really already His, I will find that He is everything I need. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Help me, Lord to always know that all I need can be found in you.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan