redemption.

it’s been too long since i’ve written. there have been so many thoughts bouncing around in my head lately… a lot of new thoughts and a lot of old thoughts too… thoughts i get sick of, but they never leave me.

i’m going to be disgustingly honest for a few minutes here, which is scary but i guess in a way it’s good, too.

i’ve been struggling a lot lately with the way people view me. i’m an imperfect person and i’ve made my share of mistakes in the past and sometimes they get brought up. it happens a lot with people that don’t really know me.. people that have met me once or twice but don’t know much more about me than what they’ve heard from other people. and it sucks. it sucks being judged by people who don’t know my background or what i’ve been through. it hurts when people think i haven’t changed. i feel like i spend so much of my time trying to prove people wrong.. trying to show them that i’m different.

and then it hit me tonight that
i don’t have to prove myself to anyone.

i was reading in Romans 8 tonight. it’s been my favorite chapter of the Bible for years now, but somehow every time i read it new things pop out at me. one erse in particular struck me today… “who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.” [Romans 8:34]. That verse… right there. That was it. That’s the answer. 

Christ is the only one who has any right to condemn us. It’s His law we broke. He’s the only one who has a perfect standard by which to condemn anyone. But… He doesn’t. He doesn’t condemn us. Redemption is perhaps my favorite word in the English language and it is characterized so simply in that verse. God has every logical reason to condemn us, every right to judge us, every right to banish us from His presence forever. But He doesn’t. He already took care of that, already bled and suffered and died so that I didn’t have to be condemned.

That’s enough.

I want to live like that’s enough. I don’t need people to accept me or believe me. I don’t need people to stop judging me because it doesn’t matter. It’s not significant. What is significant is that Jesus sacrificed absolutely everything because He loves me. When I worry about what other people think, when I beat myself up because of peoples opinion of me, I fail to accept the wonder and power and beauty of grace and redemption. And I don’t wanna do it anymore. I don’t wanna take that for granted.

I want to know what it means to live like a child of God.

I’m so overwhelmed, so blessed, so loved. I’m justified, I’m forgiven by the One who makes forgiveness possible. And I want Him to take this… all of this insecurity, all of this striving to live up to standards that aren’t His. I want Him to take all of my doubts and my struggles and my ridiculous need for approval. 

In his book “Searching for God Knows What”, Donald Miller talks about what the world would look like if we all stopped looking to each other for approval and started to look to Christ as the One who truly validates our existence. I agree with Don that the result would be… revolutionary.

I’ve made mistakes. I’m a broken individual. And that’s okay. Because Jesus already took care of that all. Romans 8:35 [the very next verse] talks about how nothing can separate us from the love of God. And I think those two verses go hand in hand. We are not condemned, we are justified. And in that justification, through that justification, we are loved.

One of my favorite organizations, (a group that had a huge part in saving my life a few years ago) put it this way:

“I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house… Tell her something true when all she’s known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.”