Skip to main content

"After all this time?". . ."Always."

"I'm not the same me, and that's all the proof I need"-Britt Nicole, "All This Time"

The title of this post comes from a conversation in one of the Harry Potter novels. In this conversation, one of the characters is telling another about his love for someone, a love so strong that even his beloved's death did not quench it. Christ offers His people this kind of love as well, but His is even stronger because He loves everyone this way, and His love is unconditional. He has loved us since long before we knew Him, He loves us even when we make mistakes, and He even loves those who have turned their backs on Him or never want to know Him. There is nothing we can do to earn His love, and there is also nothing we could ever do to lose it.

Christ's love is also transformative. As is stated in the song quote that opens this post, after we accept His love for us, we will never be the same again. Even before Christ was born, the Israelites knew that loving God could change a person's life forever. In Ezekiel 46:9, God gives the commandment "But when the people come in through the north gateway to worship the Lord during the religious festivals, they must leave by the south gateway. And those who entered through the south gateway must leave by the north gateway. They must never leave by the same gateway they came in, but must always use the opposite gateway." God doesn't want us to be the same people when we leave as we are when we came in, so he commanded the Israelites to leave by different gateways as a symbol of how an encounter with God could change them.

So how should we respond to this commandment in the 21st century? I'm not suggesting we enter and exit the church through different doors. In most churches, this is impractical, and in some it may even be impossible. Personally, I believe in a less literal interpretation of this scripture. I believe that we should go into worship each Sunday morning expecting to be changed. Worship is one of the disciplines through which God's truth is revealed to us. God loves us just the way we are, but He also loves us too much to leave us that way. He offers us a new life, but we need to be willing to take it. He has been walking with us our whole lives, and He invites us to follow Him to the eternal life granted to us through the sacrifice and resurrection of His one and only Son, Jesus Christ.

Britt Nicole-"All this Time"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Changed and Transformed

I am currently starting the fourth week of an online Bible study based on the book Living So That: Making Faith-Filled Choices in the Midst of a Messy Life  by Wendy Blight. I was drawn to the study because of the title. When I first saw it, I thought, Living so that what? Where's the rest of the title?  I now realize that the title was referring to those verses in the Bible that have the words so that  in them. The book has five chapters, each split into five parts and having a memory verse tied to the topic of that chapter. In the study, we are doing one chapter a week, and can split up the five readings for the week however we want to. I choose to read them on weekdays right after breakfast so that  I start each work day with some time spent in God's Word. Chapter One is "Jesus Came So That," and the memory verse is John 3:16. I figured, I know that verse in two languages. I got this.  I didn't figure I would have any trouble with that week because I alre...
3 comments
Read more

Help Me Find It

Much of my life has not been easy. There are many times when God's will for my life didn't seem very clear. One of those times was just after I graduated college in December 2011. Less than a week after my graduation, I found I was not admitted into the school counseling program, which was my second choice of masters programs. I had been planning to get a master's in special education, but after two failed student teaching attempts, that future was no longer possible. So right before Christmas, I found out that other than having my apartment for another semester, there was really no good reason to return to Manhattan. I did return, and ended up taking a couple of classes. I considered looking into another master's degree program. After much prayer, I decided that instead of jumping into applying for another master's program, it would be better for me to return home at the end of the semester and get a job as a para so I could gain more experience working with childr...
Post a Comment
Read more

That Song Takes Me Back

If you read my post, " Road Trip Reflections " you know that I listened to some older albums on my road trip to St. Louis. One thing I meant to put in that post, but forgot to, is how listening to those songs brought back memories of when they first came out. I considered going back and adding that point, but I decided not to because those songs aren't the only ones that are reminders of my past, either because of what was happening in my life when I first heard the song, a past event that I was reminded of the first time I heard the song, or what happened after I knew the song well that drove me to the comfort the song provided. Most of the time, the memories are positive, but there are a few that bring back bad memories. Here are some of the songs that take me back, starting with some I listened to on my trip. Steven Curtis Chapman-" Fingerprints of God " This song originally came out in 1999, but when it really started speaking to me was two years later. ...
Post a Comment
Read more