My Deepest Awareness (or what I want it to be)

Yesterday was a self-care day of sorts. I was off of work and received a wonderful 80 minute massage from a co-worker I trade with. I went to my chiropractor and got an adjustment. My pastor's daughter needed a ride from school, so I picked her up and we went to Starbucks and enjoyed chatting. She's one of my favorite people, so spending time with her is always a treat. After we consumed our lattes, I was struck with the fancy to go back to my house where it would  be more cozy, so we did just that--and ended up watching one of my all-time favorite movies, You've Got Mail, which for a sixteen-year-old probably seemed archaic. When Geoff got home we were still watching the movie, so he went to the store and then cooked dinner.

I know,  my life is so hard.

But at the end of the day, I found myself feeling like I needed to accomplish something. I somewhat neurotically folded and put away laundry, wanting to have completed at least some household chore before climbing into bed.

And I realized that I often feel more valuable as a person when I am accomplishing some measurable task.

Of course, accomplishing tasks is a good and necessary thing. But it seems there is something broken in us if we feel the need to do some kind of penance after a simple, care-free day. I had to remind myself that God does not love me based upon my work output. I don't earn points with him with each check on my to-do list. And He does not love me any less when I have had a day of rest and enjoyment.

Brennan Manning, a man who has been instrumental in my spiritual healing, once said, “My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.” But although his words have impacted me powerfully, in the day-to-day moments of my life, I often subconsciously live as though this were not true. As with most truths, we need to be reminded of them over and over again. And I wonder how our lives might look if we always lived with this as our "deepest awareness"--that we are irrevocably loved by Christ, and that just as there is nothing for us to prove in order to earn his love, there is nothing for him to do to prove his love. He did it all already in his life poured out and raised on our behalf.

The Apostle Paul prayed this prayer for the Ephesian church:

"...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" (Ephesians 3:16-19).

I'm not a Bible scholar, but I would venture to guess that Paul prayed for the Ephesians to "have strength to comprehend" the love of Christ, because he knew that in spite of all the evidence, Christ Followers would have difficulty grasping a love that goes against their own selfish nature. We imagine how we love and project that onto God. But He is completely other. There is no honeymoon phase with God, nor is He surprised by the real us after we've said I do to him.

 He loves us on our hectic, crazy days. He loves us on our productive days and on our restful days. But wouldn't it be a wonderful thing for every day to be a day of rest? That no matter how how much work we accomplish or how full our schedule is, our souls would be settled and resting in this fact: "I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it." 

Charles Spurgeon once said this to his congregation:

“I sometimes wonder that you do not get tired of my preaching, because I do nothing but hammer away on this one nail. With me it is, year after year, ‘None but Jesus!’ Oh, you great saints, if you have outgrown the need of a sinner’s trust in the Lord Jesus, you have outgrown your sins, but you have also outgrown your grace, and your saintship has ruined you!”

I so want my anthem to be 'None but Jesus!'  Not my performance. Not my accomplishments. Not my reputation. But Jesus.

There is little danger of us abusing this confession to excuse our lazy, selfish ends when we see that his love also comes with a call to follow him in loving others. But even on the days we do this poorly, we can have the calm assurance that we are loved even still. 

Oh, how he loves you and me.