Redemption: "God's most prized form of art." -Aaron Ivey (worship pastor)*
"Look at what I can do, what I will do with the most broken and dead and decaying things in your life, with the very places that you question, ' can anything good come from that?' At the beginning, I created something from nothing, but this is even better and more wondrous! As I take the pain and sorrow and heartache, the broken, seemingly useless, dead things out of your hands (this worthy, rich offering you bring Me - it is worthy and rich because it involves your heart, because in giving it to Me you have to make yourself so incredibly vulnerable to Me as you allow Me into the deepest and dearest and hardest parts of your story, your life, yourself), these things that seem so utterly and irreversibly in the grasp of the enemy and turn them into a thing of beauty for ages to come...for all of eternity. Once redeemed, these are the things you'll get to talk about for the rest of your life. These are the things that will touch and move other people's hearts. These are the things, when heard and talked about, will restore people's courage and hope and trust in Me. These are the things that will usher people into worship of Me. These are the things that will stir them up, that will give them the courage and hope and strength to keep living, to keep pursuing Me. These are the things that will bring some people to come and meet Me and know Me for the very first time. These are the things that future generations will talk about. ("Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord" - Psalm 102:18)
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." (Hebrews 12:1-2)
We have a choice (the authority) to bring our pain either to the enemy or to You. The results of bringing it to the enemy: bitterness, complaint, hardness of heart, "solving" it apart from You, in our way, in a way that causes death, disunity, disharmony, strife, pride, lies, making vows that bring about death in us and in all our relationships. satan wants to use our pain against us, he wants it to divide us, and separate us from each other, he wants our knee-jerk sinful reactions to pain to have a ripple effect, to be perpetuated down through the generations as well as across to other relationships (like a domino effect - one person falls after another, the bitterness, pride, hopelessness, etc. just keeps affecting one person after another...who will stop it?? But what if one was rooted in concrete, in the firm foundation of Love? "This stops here, No more. Actually back the other way - towards Love and Light and Hope through the power of forgiveness. We will not find life through grasping for power and control, through holding onto our bitterness and resentment, through predicting, prophesying the worst ("that person will never change...that circumstance will only go downhill from here..."). We will only find death. But here, in this place we do have the chance to choose Life. We have the ability and the authority to not only stop the effects of the enemy and his lies, but also the power and ability and God-given authority to reverse them. "This doesn't just stop here...This is also going to be turned around for good, for our eternal good and His eternal glory. The pain will have an end. The lies will have an end. The hurt will have an end. All this will pass away once they have run their course and their time runs out. They are on a timer. But His Love is not on a timer - it lasts forever. It will never fade away or diminish or end...because He has no end and He is Love."
satan's ultimate hope and desire is that our pain would turn our hearts against our God. But it's bad news...for him. Because his hopes will all be dashed, his desires will go unmet, unfulfilled as we look to the Author and Perfecter and Finisher of our faith, as we look to Him, our Good, Good Father and we are strengthened by the hope of His redemption of our pain, as our worship of Him is actually strengthened and renewed and deepened and grown each and every day.
There's no stopping this. satan, the enemy of our souls, can't stop this. In the face of his tempting of us and trying to distract and deter us...we in fact grow stronger in our God, in He who is our Strength, our Hope, our Goal. our Treasure, our Good God, the truest Lover of our souls.
As David strengthened himself in You, Lord, when his people (his very own people) were seeking to destroy him by stoning him, so we strengthen ourselves in You whenever the enemy rears his ugly head and attempts to destroy us. And You defend us. You come close and fight for us. You advocate for the weak and broken-hearted. You are for us. You make Yourself more available, You lean in closer in the midst of our struggles. We can thrust all our cares upon You, we can drop all our weight, all our longings and desires and dreams and hopes and sorrows and joys into Your arms...because You care for us. There is nothing You can't carry. You call it a privilege to be with us in our pain. There is a battle here, a battle every time we experience pain - to either bring it to satan and allow him say in how we deal with it...or to bring it to You. And when we bring it to You, Your heart soars, You rejoice in the deepest way possible, You run to meet us...because what we are doing is entrusting the deepest, most dearest and personal parts of our story to You. We are coming in our neediness, we are letting You in, we are making ourselves utterly vulnerable, we are choosing not to go our own way, we are choosing not to blame You, not to make assumptions, not to answer our own questions (especially "why?") with knee-jerk reactions, with the lies that the enemy feeds us...we are choosing not to shut down our hearts to You, not to harden our hearts against You... No, we are instead choosing to open our hearts more to You, to let our open-ended questions hang in the air between us and You until You choose to answer them...though it may take even decades for the answers to unfold and develop over time, though our questions may go unanswered on this side of Heaven, though we may never truly understand why that thing happened, though we may never feel "complete" or "satisfied" in Your answers here on this earth.
And that vulnerability, that courage, that relinquishing of control that You see in us - You recognize it...because You Yourself experienced it. You went through the very same...for us. That's how You came to us - vulnerable, needy, open to all the hurt that humanity could hand You, all the betrayal and loss and hatred and pain and sorrow that any one of us could feel. You made Yourself that vulnerable. Someone had to swaddle You. Someone had to change Your diaper! You could have come as a full-grown man, but You chose to come as a baby! Even a baby. You came and gave Yourself as an offering...to people, to us who You knew would betray You, spit on You, ridicule You, utterly and completely reject You, and in the end "reward" You for Your vulnerability and sacrifice by killing You. This You did...for us. So how much more should we come to You and make ourselves utterly vulnerable to You, baring our hearts, our pain to You, coming to You in our neediness, knowing our need and longing to be healed?
And here You meet us...on this "holy ground" of our pain.** You meet us with joy, with compassion (You suffer with us, for us), with grace, with love...You cry with us, You sit with us...You call it all a privilege to be with us in our pain. You offer the very best, the most, more than anyone could: Your very presence. And here in Your presence, we find healing. Not just healing for our immediate pain in this circumstance...but healing for all our sorrows and longings and losses...and healing for the effects of all our sin.
Because the truth is, even before this hard thing happened, we needed healing, we needed to be restored, we needed to be returned to You, reunited with You. Before that person made these choices and hurt me and all of us so badly, we needed to learn how to forgive, how to love, how to put our hope in Your redemption of all things. We needed to learn how to receive Your grace and extend it to others, especially when it's so hard. Before my breakup, I needed to learn how to hear Your voice, how to really listen, how to move forward with grace, how to surrender and let go, how to bring You my deepest hopes and desires and entrust them into Your care, how to connect with the Holy Spirit and live from, out of His strength in me...I needed this. I prayed for things like this, I prayed for growth in my relationship with You, I prayed for You to show me how to love others. And perhaps the ways in which You answered are harder or at least much different than I expected...but they are still Your answers to my prayers. They are proof of your goodness and faithfulness and Love for me. You see through me - You see through my walls and false images and keeping up of appearances...and You see me through - You see me through the pain and sorrows and struggles, both the losses and the gains, through the lessons I'm learning, through the lessons I have to relearn again and again, through hopes lost and hopes gained, through the joys and the sorrows...until one day I will stand before You, I will stand face-to-face with You in all the glorious light of Your presence (which I long for with all that is in me) and I will say, "It was all worth it. Every tear I cried, every dark night, every day I felt like I couldn't go on, every day I felt like I couldn't walk out the door and offer anything of worth to anyone, every night that I tried to stifle the cries, every time I saw someone or thought of someone who I thought would be changed, would be different, would have come to You as their Lord and Savior by now, every moment I struggled and fell and was tempted and felt like I had lost the fight to sin forever, every time I felt accosted by shame and guilt and condemnation, every time I felt like I had gone beyond the reach of Your grace for me, every time I lost something or someone on earth and wondered how I could continue living with this lack, with this fear, with this ache in my heart...You made it all worth it. Because You reached beyond where I thought You could ever reach, because You ran towards me and not away from me, because You took the most broken things, the deadest things and You healed me, You gave me life, You resurrected those dead and broken things, You breathed life into them and made them a thing of beauty for me and all the rest of the world to see. And because of this, because of Your gracious and glorious, breathtaking redemption of all things...I will never be the same again."
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWQuBMtL_oc
**Jason Gray