For anyone who has followed The Kings of Eden for any length of time, you will know that I tend to write a good bit about personal transformation—inner healing, deliverance, mind renewal, and doing these things with fragmented parts of the soul. I do this because I believe it is a vital part of the life of any follower of Jesus, and that if we want to truly run the race marked out for us as Hebrews 12:1 tells us, we must also do what it says in that same passage to throw off every hindrance and sin. Now, if I never put any of my own teachings into practice then not only would I quickly run out of things to write about on these subjects, but I wouldn’t see any of the benefits myself. I want to share with you something that happened in the past few weeks when I took some time to sit with Jesus and process something I was finding myself questioning inside—something that multiples of parts were asking in that moment and that in some ways I find myself asking from time to time as well: “Jesus, why do you love me?”
It’s such a simple question and at the same time a deeply profound one. Because why does Jesus love us? Because it’s easy for me to look at my own life and see the unlovely things. It’s easy for me to judge myself, to look at things I’m ashamed of, ways I have hurt other people, and identify the things about me that simply don’t match up with His kindness, goodness, and love. And you know what makes it even more scandalous? When I talk to Him about it, He always confirms not just that He loves me, but that He is proud of me
What I settled on in that moment with Him is something also somewhat simple yet profound—that Jesus loves me simply because He determined to. You see, I think that even outside of the fact that the Bible explicitly states it, we all know on some level that no amount of our good deeds can ever earn us God’s love or favor or His pride or pleasure in us. Which means that Jesus loves me simply because he decided to love me. And if He decided to love me aside from anything I said or did, then nothing I say or do will be able to remove that love because it was never a determining factor to begin with. My behavior and thoughts and life choices were never part of the equation to begin with! And that should be a really freeing realization to us—not because it means we now have a license to sin because it somehow doesn’t matter because that’s just foolish. It means that none of the ways that I make mistakes or mess up in life have the ability to change a single thing about His love because they were never part of the decision-making process. It means that I can *trust* in His love for me.
Then I felt like the Holy Spirit directed me to think about raising children. I helped raise step-grandkids over the past decade and a half, and so while I don’t have kids of my own yet, I am familiar with raising children. What the Holy Spirit began to speak to me about was the fact that when one of the grandgirls did something that upset me or was disobedient or maybe was even just clumsy and spilled something on the carpet, it didn’t change my love for them. Was there discipline? At times there was. But it wasn’t because I was angry at them (or at least if in that moment I was parenting from a healthy space it wouldn’t be)—it would be because the discipline was meant to teach them something so they would learn and grow and change, not simply for the purpose of punishment. That meant that discipline also rarely involved pain. I’m not a fan of spanking as a general whole because to me, beating a defenseless child is not a healthy or appropriate means of behavior modification in most situations. The time one of the kids almost walked into traffic I was quite comfortable letting them associate that danger with pain, but for almost any other situation I don’t believe that pain is a tool of discipline. And I don’t think our Heavenly Father is that way either. Why? Because if I can think of it, He already thought of it, and I think it would be arrogant to presume I’m a better parent than Him.
As the Holy Spirit was showing all of this to me, all I could do was cry. And in reality everything I am sharing takes far more words to communicate than what He spoke to my heart in just a few moments, but He is so incredibly kind to me, and I often feel that He is far kinder to me than I deserve—but again, isn’t that the point? That I deserve it because He determined I did, not because of anything special about my actions or choices, which also means that I can’t disqualify myself either.
This past October I was honored to be invited as a guest speaker on my friend Barry Maracle’s Wake Up Into Your Dream Podcast and Barry asked me a question he asks every new guest on his show—“If you could describe God in one word, what would it be?” While “love” is the safe answer, and is theologically correct, the one that is most important to me personally is His kindness. Jesus has always been so incredibly kind to me in my life. Not just the ways He has protected me throughout the years, both in the ways I am aware of and the ones I’ll never know, but He is always just so kind and gentle with my heart. In my moments of grief and sorrow and pain, He has always carried me with His kindness, spoken to me gently, and encouraged my heart with what He thinks about me.
If you have ever struggled with understanding the love that God has for us, that Jesus carries for each and every one of us, then I want to leave you with one final thought, something out of the Song of Solomon, which in many ways is a message from Jesus to His Bride, you and me. Song of Solomon 4:9 says, “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes. . .” It doesn’t say that He stole our hearts with one glance, it says that with one glance of our eyes we ravish His heart. If that single sentence doesn’t express how wild about us Jesus is, I don’t know what will. I pray that for your heart and mine, that our hearts are open to receive a deeper measure of the love of Jesus Christ that is poured out upon us by the Holy Spirit, and that every barrier, every lie, and every hindrance to receiving that love melts away in His kindness, goodness, and light. May you be well, may you be blessed, and may you be filled with His love today. In Jesus’ name, amen.
