Your grace beyond reason has paid for our freedom..

..."Where We Belong" - Hillsong

There is s much brokenness in this world. There always has been. I am reminded of it when I see little broken lives flashed across the television screen as “The Ten Greatest Hollywood Tragedies”… This time it was Anna Nicole Smith’s story. Her brokenness. Her son’s life, and his own brokenness. As the media ridiculed and flashed her personal life to the rest of the world, in the midst and in the deep, deep pain that she was in when her son accidentally OD’d (for reasons that may also speak to a brokenness that the world offered us in the form of a pretty little gift called pleasure and escapism), she wondered: “Why do they hate me so much?”. It made it wonder what was said that wasn’t true or simply speculation about exactly WHY her life had spiraled as it had… It seems like she was just publically living the ridicule that we all face privately when we’ve been overtaken by the brokenness that is in this world. I actually cried. I think I was primed a little bit by what I read today in Redeeming Love, several accounts of deep rooted brokenness and still love that was greater – love and strength shown by God, but in tangible ways of unconditional love on the part of a husband, and through his wife who loved him so much she was willing to sacrifice her own pleasure in that love to give him what she could not (whether that was the correct decision or not). Through a man and a woman who were in love but one was blinded by his own mistakes and wanted to walk away—. Brokenness, sin, pain, difficulties- all of these things that are disguised as beautiful things: pleasure, happiness, easy-living. This truth causes my heart to beg a desperate question: How ARE we to survive in a world that is so two-faced? I write that with resentment towards this two-faced world and conclude that through my own experiences with God and his promises, he really is our only hope, and hope defined is trusting that God is working out his promises for us. To have hope, to trust, to survive this world means to live obediently to God’s Word and presence in our lives, not as a chore, but as a way of life… not as this two-faced world offers, but as God offers.

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“Who are you?” she whispered, terrified. Who are you?”

Yaweh, El Shaddai, Jehovah mekoddishkem, El Elyon, El Olam, Elohim…
- Redeeming Love, pg. 399

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I feel like I know a little better, now, why Jesus prayed in his last days:

“My prayer is not that you would take them out of the world, but that you would protect them from the evil one.” -Jesus

Dear Christian, you are not of this world any more than Jesus was of the world. And that is what we need to be, NOT of this world, but of God.

Despite my own brokenness, I have been made whole by the redeeming work of God through Jesus, Yaweh, one who saves. I will always been a work in progress, and despite living in a broken world that often affects me and those I love, I have a hope, I trust in the way God is working in my life. I love being reminded of how I was thought of, how I was loved, how I am known by God.

I invite and encourage you to see how Jesus prayed for us: John 17, verse by verse.

Thank you, God for giving us a place of safety and belonging at your throne, where we belong.

Lindsay