As my wife and I edged the Abilene city limits this morning, a familiar song came on the radio that transported my mind back to my teenage years...
My family was new to attending church and I was new to learning about God and His salvation. I had heard the story of Jesus dying on the cross before - many times, in fact...but for some reason, the message was starting to hit my heart in a more realistic way. I was starting to open myself up to the reality that Jesus was more than just stories or words on a page. He was more than just an old movie that my family would watch on occasion. He was more than the simple imagery our pastor would build in my mind as he preached His message in the pulpit.
Jesus was starting to become ALIVE in my life and finding an understanding of why He would die for the sins of the world, and for me, became more than just a casual thought or concern. I needed to know why because I didn’t understand... What was so special about me? What was so precious about my small, human life that He would willingly be beaten and crucified for my sin? It weighed heavy on my mind…WHY?
“Greater love has not a man than the one who gives his life to prove... that he would do anything, and that’s what I’m going to do for you.”
These words, soulfully sung from the deep southern drawl of Mac Powell, would nourish my heart as I walked the halls of Jim Ned. I'd enjoy passing periods with my Walkman in hand; its thick, metal headband and two large, orange earpads canceled out the noise around me.
“Don’t you know I’ve always loved you?”
Hearing these first words of the chorus always pierced deep in my chest, sometimes provoking hot tears from my eyes.
“Don’t you know I’ve always loved you? Even before there was time. Though you turn away, I tell you still…don’t’ you know I’ve always loved you…and I always will.”
The thought that Jesus knew me and loved me, even before there was time, would sometimes overwhelm my finite mind. If that was true, then that meant that God saw the totality of my life; even before I had lived it. It meant that He saw my joys and victories, but that He also saw my wretched failures and disappointments. He saw all these things, the beautiful and the ugly, before I was even born or drew a breath…and He loved me still…and in truth, He’s never stopped.
I didn’t understand how God could love that way, but I soon discovered that I didn’t need to understand WHY He did, I just needed to ACCEPT that He did.
God is God and I am not. That reality is so beautifully clear, proven by His death on the cross... but it’s also more than that.
In my college years, I remember a phrase (or better yet, a question) that started to make its way into the minds and hearts of the Christian culture most everywhere: Have you accepted Jesus as your PERSONAL SAVIOR?
I didn’t think about it then, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that question to be so limiting.
You see, when I think about Jesus being my PERSONAL savior, it makes me feel like I have some kind of connection with God that no one else does... That somehow, He’s given me a gift of salvation that’s personally designed and custom-made for only me or only you. Even the definition of the word PERSONAL is defined as this: “of, affecting, or belonging to a particular person rather than to anyone else.”
While our walks with Jesus are always different, and the personal connections we feel to Him during that walk vary, the truth is...there’s nothing PERSONAL when it comes to salvation. Simply put, salvation is given, by God, for EVERYONE. The gift is always the same. Unchanging. Just like He is.
So, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done in life...JESUS LOVES YOU. JESUS LOVES ALL.
He loves each and every one of us in such an UNCONDITIONAL and GRAND way that He died so that the darkness that dwells within us all could be purified by HIS blood and redeemed by HIS resurrection.
That sin that plagues us... that darkness that tries to define us as unworthy, ill-equipped, and hopeless... all of it can be forgiven by the One who has always loved us.
Jesus has ALWAYS loved you.
He always will.
There is no greater promise for us to hold onto than that.
Comments