I just returned from a wonderfully refreshing weekend at college camp, though I am unimaginably exhausted. These past three days have been some of the best I’ve had in a long time, just being with the Lord, and pleading earnestly before his throne. Pleading for a heart to love him more, pleading for the salvation of a couple non-believers that came up with us for the weekend, pleading for transparency with other believers, pleading for my family. After praying with a couple of the brothers last night, I walked away with an overwhelming sensation that God is the victor. We labor in a spiritual battle, a war where souls are won and lost. And our God wins. Always.
In Christ alone, my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song.
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
I’ve come away from this past week with a great realization of the weight of the gospel, the power of the cross. I’ve been a Christian for seven years. Seven years today. I’m sick of my sin. I’m sick of living for myself. I want to live for You. Three sentences I prayed that have been burned in my memory forever. I remember the date only because it was at a high school camp (always this same holiday weekend). I don’t believe there is any power in having a “moment” or a “date” when we are saved. I just happen to. And for me it serves as a wondrous memorial of the work he has done in my life; it’s always a time to reflect on how far I’ve come (or not come) in the last year, and, today, in the last seven years.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when striving cease!
My comforter, my all in all,
Here in the love of Christ I stand.
I can see the general flow of the Lord moving in my life these past seven years: which years are good, what years were bad, what he taught me when. I think this year has been a great year of simplifying. Some years emphasized growing in my knowledge of biblical truths. Some in living out certain aspects of the Christian life. This year, and this week especially, has been taking me back to the cross. It’s not about knowing stuff or acting the right way, being good or standing for truth. It’s about God’s grace. Unmerited and unasked-for grace. What Christ did on the cross is so simple, so utterly at the core of all we believe. And yet I will never fathom the depth of what that means. How can I comprehend, or even attempt to comprehend, what it means for the God of the universe to humble himself below any man, to be whipped, and torn, and nailed to a beam of wood?
In Christ alone, who took on flesh.
Fullness of God in helpless babe.
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones he came to save.
And infinitely more unfathomable is what it means the that Trinity, who existed for all of eternity in a joy and bliss far greater than anything I have ever experienced, was torn apart for those six hours. God the Son, seperate from the joy of the Father and the Spirit for the first and only time ever, made the object of the molten wrath of God for the sins I committed today, and never even noticed, for the sins I committed years ago, and have long since forgotten, for the sins I will do in years to come, and have no way of knowing. Eloi! Eloi! Lama sabachthani!. The only time in his 33 years Jesus did not call God “Father.”
Till on that cross, as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied.
For every sin on him was laid.
Here in the death of Christ, I live.
No. That, I will never understand.
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