What I Wish I Could Tell You

Four girls sat around me in a circle, my heart was anxious with anticipation for joy that these girls wanted to know Jesus.
The Pastor had made the call. He invited the counselors to stand. He said, "If you've never asked forgiveness for your sins and you want to ask Jesus to come into your life, come forward."
The Gospel had tugged on their heart, Jesus was knocking on their door and in their simple 11-year-old hearts they were answering.
How could I tell them? How could I explain the beauty of the Gospel?
How could I show them that the choice to follow Jesus is the most important choice they could ever make? How could I show them that it would alter their history? Change their heart? Dictate their future?
I sat there in awe because yes, indeed this Gospel is simple, but by no means is it easy.
How lovely that it is powerful enough to invite in a young child, encourage a staggering adult, heal a broken man, and change a dark soul.
I wanted to tell them so many things. I had so many words. But I had to choose what was important and that is the Gospel. The Gospel that would not change today or when they were 65 years old looking back to that moment when they chose to follow Jesus. But if I could choose, if I could decide what to tell these beautiful girls on the most important day of their lives: it would have been this.

I want you to know how grateful I am that you have entered the Kingdom. I want you to know that the simplicity of the Gospel will not change but the tests of time and faith will increase. I wish I could explain to you the first moment when the truth of what Jesus did for me sunk in, but I'm not sure it was a moment, rather a series of small moments which have weaved together to become a tapestry that is me. I remember being in your shoes. I remember being a small girl, asking Jesus into my heart for the first time, not entirely sure what that meant but convinced that it had just altered the path I would walk. I remember being a camper nearing the end of my elementary journey, whispering prayers because for the first time I was wrestling with sin. The kind that I was afraid of, the one that I was ashamed of, and I prayed that Jesus would wash me clean. The sinful thoughts did not fade right away, but Jesus was faithful as I learned to set my gaze on Him. I wish I could explain to you that it wasn't easy. I wish I could show you a mirror into my soul and you could see the turmoil of that memory but the peace that has replaced it. 

I want you to know that when hard things come it doesn't mean that Jesus has withdrawn his love. When the doctor's words break your heart, I want you to know that Jesus is there. That in his sovereignty, this trial will be used for good. Because, love, the day I found out my mom was dying, was the first of the hardest days of my life. I didn't know in that moment but my heart was launched into space, where it would float slowly through time and plummet quickly into a black hole that stole everything that held me secure. But the way my heart was encouraged that day was the Gospel. Jesus sent arms to wrap around me, people to hold me, words to encourage me, songs to fill my heart with truth. I want you to know that the gospel is there too. When we say goodbye to those we hold dear, the Gospel is the steadfast in the earthquake, the strong light from the Lighthouse in the hurricane. 

I want you to know that sometimes where He calls us makes little sense. How could it when he calls us from our home? When he calls you to a different state to heal your soul? Or when he calls you to another country, to people who don't speak your language? To share moments with people, to plant seeds, water gardens or harvest the ground? How can I explain how exponentially it fills your heart or how thoroughly it breaks it?

I wish I could I tell you about the time I said "Yes" to Jesus. It was the time I counted up the cost of following this man. A speaker told us that when we count the cost of following Jesus it will always lead to joy. If we have not found joy, we have added incorrectly. I went outside and I walked and I walked and I walked until I stumbled upon the joy of following Jesus. You see, it doesn't come from my circumstance, but it comes with the deep and beautiful and vast and wide joy of knowing Jesus Christ as my Lord. The joy did not come from following a list of rules about right and wrong, but it came from the assurance in my heart that God incarnate resided inside of me and I have the privilege of knowing him. 

Love, I want you to know this isn't easy. I want you to know that I have felt crippling pain, but I have met the great Healer. He doesn't always heal me the way I desire or hope, but he changes me. I want you to know how thrilling it is to follow him. Like this moment, when I get to share the central focus that has become my life. 

Because, my friend, the Gospel is so extravagant. More vast than the stars you gaze into at night and more lovely than the most delicate of flowers. 

And this is what I choose to share with you, on the most important day of your life:

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Creator of the Universe, the maker of Heaven and earth, the sustainer of this land, came to earth. He came and he walked a lonely earth. He came and He loved a broken people. He touched the untouchables, he loved the unloveable. He turned water into wine, He made the blind man see, He made the dead man walk.
Jesus Christ saw our broken state and left Paradise to come to us. When we could not come to Him, when we did not care, when we turned our back, He came. He came to be Immanuel, He came to be God with us. Not only did He come, but He called His followers to Himself. He called them to be different, to be Lights in the world that shine against the darkness.
He laid down his life for us. He saw our desperate state and sacrificed His perfection so we could enter the throne room of God.
Jesus Christ died a death He did not deserve for an underserved people. Three days later, He rose from the grave and conquered death.
HE IS the way the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through Him. The Gospel is revolutionary.
The Gospel is simply this: what we could not do, He did.
And He opens the invitation for those of us who want to enter.
"For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved." (Romans 10:9)


I want you to know that the Gospel is simple, it is not easy but it is worth every second.

I could not tell these girls this, but I could tell them the Gospel, and I pray with everything inside of me that it is enough to carry them through everything. I pray that they learn these lessons with time. I pray that they continue to say "Yes," to Jesus. I stand amazed because the power that is in this simplicity is overwhelming and it has overcome me. 

Grace Like An Ocean

What if it wasn’t enough? All the love that we bottled up and poured out on the ones we held most dear? We filled our leaking vessels with what we thought would fill the hearts that fester and bleed. We took our unsteady acts of kindness and fragile gifts of hope and offer them like a small child giving the gift of a dandelion to their mother. Deep inside, we know it’s not enough, but it stands firm on the foundation of love. The dandelion fades, the kindness is whisped away like a feather in the wind, but the steadfast gift of love remains.

But it is possible that it wasn’t enough. As age came and captured our bodies, the vessels of our hearts became heavier, like a roof that has endured enough storms, it caves. But we don’t take the time for restoration. And we fill, fill, fill, yet it is never enough. Because we leak, leak, leak.

Until there is nothing left to refill it with.

Until we are empty.

And dry.

And so exhausted.

Then comes the anger. Because we are empty and our love isn’t working. Our communication skills shattered on the ground. Angry with ourselves for trying and failing. And this is close to home.
Because what was the center of my world for so long I see has a failure.
What was the very reason for the breath in my lungs was meaningless.

A valiant effort, like a baby eagle, kicked out of the nest, stretched his tiny wings out, believing he could fly, but plummets to the ground.
It was not without rescue though, because the mother Eagle never lets her baby down. Just as the baby eagle thinks he will never soar above the trees again, she swoops into his helpless state and catches him and flies back to the nest, only for the process to begin again.

But I’m not a baby eagle. I’m a grown eagle, who is tired. I’m unable to save those who are falling. I won’t reach them in time. And even if I did, my strength is not able to save them, because they aren’t baby eagles either.

There are gifts for moments like this.

Restoration and grace have a way of offering the solace we need.

It begins with a picture of the ocean.

The ocean is relentless. Never once does the water fail to kiss the shore or the waves to crash on onto the sandy edge of the earth. It is faithful to the shore. Sometimes ravishing the coast after ferocious winds stir up its strength. Sometimes gently touching the shore, reminding us of his presence. What a picture of grace, I thought, as I stood with the water tickling my toes. The deeper I went, the more I felt washed clean by the dirty water. Jumping the waves, laying onto of their majesty, tossed by their power, suddenly a kid again. The worries, the fears, the tensions all fade away.

It’s like that with grace. I can run, fast and far, away from grace. But without it, there is no restoration, there is no hope.

Sometimes we run from it for valid reasons. Memories roared in my head of when the waves were unkind to my body, when fear flooded my heart and the water terrorized me. Before I had learned the art of the ocean, before I had embraced the love of danger that comes with adventure, stories of me as a little girl being taken by the ocean, a memory I cannot shake here at the shore. But I refuse to let the fear stop me from returning to this powerful force that paints a portrait of grace.

I wonder though, why we always compare the attributes of God to dangerous things?
Grace like an ocean, love like a hurricane, an avalanche. Peace like a river.

Is it because He's dangerous? Is it because what He can do to me could wreck my soul? Maybe I need to drown in Him so He can teach me the value of each breath that I take. Maybe we need His grace to be an ocean because it is unexpected. It might not be what we wanted, what we dreamed about as a child and wished on the bright stars for. But it is far more extravagant, far more lovely than our dreams could ever be. Even the hurricanes and the tsunamis are for our good. It does not come without grief or pain. But the grief is there to soften us and the pain to build up others. Grace is dangerous, unexpectedly so. But grace is also gentle and kind because it is a gift that changes me in the most beautiful of ways. Grace is the ocean that ravages the shores of my life in a hurricane, it wrecks the things that I once thought lovely so that he can build me up into God’s workmanship, that resembles Him, that shines brightly so that they no longer see me, but they see Christ within me. Grace isn’t what I thought, but it is what I need. It is beyond all I hoped for. Grace unveils the truth that I am not enough but covers me so that I am. Grace unravels the truth that I am more flawed than I dare admit but weaves me back together into a testimony of mercy and love. Grace extends a bridge because my offering was not enough, but it lays the foundation of the offering that was. 

Thank you, Lord, for offering me Grace like an ocean, vast and deep and wide, when I deserved nothing of the kind.

“But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved! And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might display the surpassing riches of His grace, demonstrated by His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life." Ephesians 2:4-10