Teatime with Sarah and Mr. Tumnus

He loves me as Sarah

For so long I have been 'surrendering' my life to God. Tonight I realized how many problems that phrase can cause. In my mind, unconsciously, it presented God as this all-powerful figure that despises me. See if you think about it, surrender is a term that is used in history lectures to describe the action committed by the losing side to the winning side a.k.a the one they fought against, their enemy. Now I understand why I have been so resentful. I kept looking at it as me losing. If you know me, you know I HATE losing. I have never met a person, who says "yea losing is so much better than winning. I hate that rush winning gives you. Nah, give me that complete rush of disappointment!" Yea right! See having a relationship with Christ is not what that is about. God is not our enemy. We aren't losing. By choosing Christ you actually win!

God doesn't hate us. He despises the sin within us. He hates how it causes us unrest and pulls us further away from His redeeming love. Our battle is not against God. The battle is against the sin inside of each us. It is against the voice that says God could never love you. It is against the voice that tells you to run from God and find satisfaction in the physical, in the now. God is our ally. No, He is even more than that. He is the 'secret weapon.' We only win because of what He offers. For so long this has been me: "Okay God... I guess I will go ahead and do this even though I think I would be happier if I were on the same track as that person (pointing randomly) or if You prepped me a little bit better. Hey, why do I have to do this again?" The sad thing is I am not even kidding. For so long I have lived in this pit of self pity (maybe that is why the word pity has the word pit in it...hmm...very interesting). When I prayed to God at night I prayed for everyone and knew that He would come through for them, but I wouldn't give Him my heart or any of my desires. I held back the big things. See in my head I changed all the Bible verses to exclude me. For example, "Delight in God and He will give you the desires of your heart...however if this is Sarah born on Pentecost Sunday of 1987 this excludes you."

Even though I grew up singing songs like what "A Friend We Have in Jesus" I forgot that Jesus wanted to be my friend. Overtime He developed into the Big Bully on the playground, when He has actually never been that. It has been Satan that has fed me those lies and I ate 'em up like apple pie. Surrendering to God really means letting Jesus come into the fortress of your heart. Not so two warring sides can agree to terms for a treaty; no, He comes in and offers Himself. He already died for us. Really what more can I ask Him to do? Jesus is NOT the enemy. He is the Savior. He is my Savior. He didn't come to steal, kill, and destroy. Nope that is Satan. Also on a side note I have been reading Harry Potter and in Harry Potter no one likes to say the name Voldemort. Most of the people just want to forget about him. I feel like this is what the Church sometimes does to Satan. Just because you might believe there is no Satan, it doesn't mean he isn't real and that he is not at work. Someone can come up to me on the street and say you don't really exist, guess what it doesn't really stop me from existing on that street and looking at that person like he had way too much to drink! However, what we need to remember is that Satan is not all powerful. God has already defeated Satan. When Jesus Christ died on the cross, His blameless life gave people a choice. People now had the choice to choose eternal life with Him or spend an eternity apart from Him. It shocks me that people choose death over life, but then again people still die from preventable diseases like the measles all because they refuse to receive the vaccination. Then there are people like me who receive the vaccination, but run around in fear that somehow they will catch the measles. That somehow God will become sick of me and not love me.

Tonight I allowed God to see all of me and I stopped caring about trying to look perfect. I stopped trying to be someone else. Heaven didn't open up and the earth didn't shake, but something inside of me felt unchained, unburdened. Jesus, my friend, revealed His love for me and showed me that He doesn't want to battle me or give me plenty of scars so that I can be a good, numb soldier. Instead, He just let me reveal my heart to Him and He lovingly accepted what I had to offer. He loves me as Sarah. What a friend I truly do have in Jesus.

posted by Sarah @ 3:49 AM