Monday, January 2, 2012

Testimony of Christ in me.

I'm learning that who I am through Christ is more important than who I am without Him. It's the most freeing thing I've ever experienced; nothing else could ever satiate my heart, mind, and soul. I don't want to bother people who don't want to know Him, but I'm not willing to keep the most important thing I will ever know, a secret. If you don't want to know anything else about this topic, stop reading now.

If I could cure illnesses, I would tell everyone. If I could cheat death, I would tell everyone. If could teach joy and love, I would. If I could give away contentment and happiness, I would. But I can't do those things.

What I can do is talk about my Savior, who came to rescue us from ourselves, and our tragic fate on earth. He isn't magical, but He is powerful, and He is love. He brings freedom from fear of life or death, and purpose beyond your wildest imagination. He gives us more than we could ever give back. He guarantees his love to those who choose to acknowledge Him and adore Him for who he is.

Yet we waste time on the non-guaranteed, and we risk everything on anything else, just to hide from Him. So we can say we are in control, and we did it all ourselves. We seek the here and now in place of seeking the hope found in Christ, or hope in anything, for that matter, because "here and now" is tangible, and hope feels like wishful thinking. (Until you've experienced it in the magnitude of Christ.)

The truth is: the things we do are never enough. The lives we build are temporary, everyone is destined to die, and nobody knows exactly what comes after death. People live in fear, seeking anything they can get their hands on to comfort them while they wait for the scary unknown. Happiness is the word people use to describe whatever else they feel in between the fear. Love is just something we think we feel, and it is VERY conditional and limited. People get lonely, feel lost, suffer pain, face addictions, illnesses, death. It's really tragic, and we cannot save ourselves from it, no matter how hard we try.

That's where Christ comes in, He does what we can't do for ourselves. When you know Him, when you encounter the Living God, your Creator, you don't just feel better, you are brand new. You can't go back from this kind of genuine, unconditional, non-fearful, unlimited, eternal; love.

If you've never felt it or known it, you can't possibly know what you're missing out on, but that's why people who know Him should be telling everyone they know, what it's like. Because it really is important, and valid to existence. Not just now, but in eternity. Not just to get you out of hell one day, but also to save you from the "hell" on earth that every man, woman, and child has to face in some form or another.

Christ is not just about going to church, being good enough, getting out of hell one day, saving other people, feeling validated, finding purpose, or other reasons people come up with to make Christ who they want him to be. Knowing Him is what it takes to reconcile ourselves to God, to reconnect with the very thing we were created to do. Knowing Christ means finding grace and truth, and not wanting to let go of it for anything else. The purpose of God is not to fit Him into our lives, but to let him fill our lives until our lives reflect and glorify Him.

It's not about any of us. It never was. It's always been about the God of the universe. He was and is and is to come. He made us, to be with him and glorify His name. There's so much more going on than we are aware of, and Christ came to make us aware of it.

Please don't ignore him, whatever you do. You're missing out if you do, in more ways than you'll ever realize.