Wounds

“I was more broken than you on the Cross.”

A few months ago, the Lord whispered this to me. I drew a picture of a wound with blood pouring out. Divine Blood. Eternal Life. 

I’ve been learning a lot about wounds lately. How very important they are. From Jesus’ wounds sprang eternal life; ours are important as well.

When we try to heal wounds ourselves, dirt and mire finds them. I think the Lord wants to do so much more with our brokenness. I have felt Him calling me to sit and soak in His presence, to let Him touch and heal my griefs. To allow His Spirit, His eternal life to pour of them out into the lives of those surrounding me. The reason I tend to shy away from this, I believe, that we all tend to shy away from exposing the wounds that the sin of ourselves and the world has inflicted upon us, from being real with our hurts, is because it... hurts. Like when putting hydrogen peroxide on a cut, allowing His Spirit to restore our rawness stings and pulls and brings us to our knees. But, in that place on the ground, in the space where prayers turn to tears, when Jesus holds us and turns our gazes heavenward, His light shines the most.

Jesus’ wounds saved us all. And He wants to keep pouring out into the world through ours, healing them as His glory passes through, giving us beautiful scars to share His testimony. 

I saw a vision of His Kingdom. We were all covered in bruises and scrapes and dirt and blood. His blood. We were following Him Whose blood gave us life. Our raggedness made all the more powerful at His divine touch. He had conquered death and was leading us home. And one day, we will be clothed in fine linen, white and pure, behind the Faithful and True Rider on a white horse, who will wear many diadems and Whose word is like a double-edged sword. Our wounds will be healed. But the same Rider, with eyes like flames of fire, called King of Kings and Lord of Lords, He it is who we are following now. Who wants to touch and heal our wounds. The Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. The Lover of your soul wants to heal you and He wants to revive the world while doing it, will you let Him?

"But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities: upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed." Isaiah 53:5

Revelation 20:11-15

What I Can Do

When I was worshipping at the beginning of the year, the Lord gave me the word ‘endure.’ As time has gone on, nothing outwardly catastrophic has happened, but he has been disciplining me in ways that make me say ‘endure.’ One thing I have felt the Holy Spirit tell me to pray is that the Lord would break me down. Asking for the him to break you is a scary thing because he has ears, people! And he answers us. But, here, we experience immeasurably more than we could ever ask for.

Early on this year, He kept giving me a vision of waves ceaselessly crashing over me (he knows I love the ocean). I had ideas, but I did not know exactly what He meant by this. But as the months have progressed, he has been calling me back to my failures, to observe my sin and not run away from it. To know, I mean really know, how wretched I am.

He has been calling me to places at the end of myself. Where my sinful, sinful heart has no more love or mercy to give.  I was worshipping and ended up in tears, “I hate this world.”

I had come to the place at the end of myself. I had poured out all that I had and the lord whispered, “keep pouring.” “POURING WHAT?!” I quipped. And this was it. This was exactly where he wanted me. This is exactly where he wants us all to be. The Lord loves to make beautiful things. He LOVES to make beauty out of brokenness. I had hit rock bottom right beside me. I looked beside me, “Do you get it, daughter? Do you get it?” Jesus said.

 During a night of worship at Regent, the Holy Spirit came and poured out big time. Singing and wailing and sobbing prevailed as we soaked in prayer. Normally, I am a HUGE crier in the Holy Spirit. But the Lord had me laughing all night as I felt him healing the room and he rejoiced, “Look what I can do. Look what I can do.”

Tonight I went to the release of a local Christian musician’s EP. “Love does not grow on trees,” he sang. I remembered an article I read on the physical death of Jesus: what nerves the nails in his wrist obliterated, the way his lungs felt, his body so severely scourged that he was dead in three hours. I remembered the scriptures: the Pharisees hating Jesus, the disciples rebuking Jesus, the pupil betraying Jesus, the masses killing Jesus. Jesus suffered excruciatingly (late 16th cent.: from Latin excruciat- ‘tormented,’ from the verb excruciare based on crux, cruc- ‘a cross’) in this world. And He suffered by his grace. Gracegracegracegracegracegracegracegracegracegracegracegracegrace.  Tears streamed down my face. “Grace, Anna, grace.”

I remembered a speaker talking about Matthew 5:7 who explained that we can only give love, mercy, and grace if we receive love, mercy, and grace. They are not currencies that we accrue on our own. The reason God wants us at the end of ourselves is because it is there that we let our souls receive these things from their one, true Source.  Grace is not a one-time deal. We must perpetually let ourselves receive it, every single moment. We must LIVE in grace.

I am lying at the spot on the beach where broken waves rush over me. The water is the perfect temperature, the perfect color; the water is indescribably perfect. It runs through my hair. It abounds around me. It pervades the deepest parts of me. I realize that I should not be able to breath. My lungs expire. I panic. I open my mouth, but… I breathe. I tepidly try another breath, then another, until I am making joyful noise to the Rock of my salvation. “Exist here. Exist in my grace. Let it cover you like this perfect water covers you. Rest in grace. Be immersed in grace. Live in grace.”

 

In our helplessness, we are sustained by ceaseless grace.

1 Oh come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! 2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! 3 For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. 4 In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. 5 The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. 6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! 7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, 9 when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. 10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, "They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways." 11 Therefore I swore in my wrath, "They shall not enter my rest."

[Psalm 95]

"Suffer Not" -Ian Thornton

"These Are the Days" -Natalie Merchant (picture yourself running through a field of buttercups with Jesus)

Talitha Cumi

"Talitha Cumi"

A while ago, one of my friends at Virginia Tech got this tattooed on her wrist. “Cool,” I thought. Another cheeky, little Christian tat.

 But, today, I read through Mark 5 and my soul was shaking. Those two little Aramaic words made me shut my bible and walk in circles around the kitchen. ‘What? WHAT?!’

“Taking her by the hand, he said to her, ‘Talitha cumi,’ which means, ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise.’”

And she arose. There are so many things I love about the Healing of Jairus’s Daughter. The intimacy of Jesus and the girl he raises, the display of his complete sovereignty-obviously, in bringing someone back to life, but also being more powerful the “ceremonially unclean.” I think the thing I like the most about this is that Jesus knows that she is “not dead but sleeping.” “Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem…Arise, shine for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” [Isaiah 51:17…60:1]. I mean COME ON, seriously?! Jesus “put them all outside;”-the distraction of an unbelieving crowd and the professional mourners- he took her “by the hand and said to her, ‘talitha cumi’…and immediately the girl got up and began walking… and [he] told them to give her something to eat.”

 Jesus individually comes beside us and tells us to “wake up… and arise from the dead” [Ephesians 5:14], the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies long forgotten in my mind. The prophecy is here and now. Jesus walks among us and he is constantly prodding, “Wake up, you sleeper! What are you doing with the life I gave you?’ I cannot believe I get to wake up to “the sunrise [that has visited us from on high] to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide [my] feet into the way of peace” [Luke 1:78b-79]. TO EXPERIENCE THE REFULGENT IMAGE OF “THE INVISIBLE GOD, THE FIRSTBORN OF ALL CREATION… [IN WHOM] THE FULLNESS OF GOD WAS PLEASED TO DWELL…MAKING PEACE BY THE BLOOD OF HIS CROSS” [Colossians 1:15;19;20]. That’s the light we get to wake up to; we just have to wake up.

"Awake, O sleeper and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." [Ephesians 5:14]

"Ain't No Mountain High Enough" -Marvin Gaye

"Let It Be" -Bill Withers

Little Heirs

I am beginning to understand reasons why Christ wants children to have His Kingdom. Today, I was wrecked by some little heirs.

As the songs began some little children showed us all how to praise the Most High King. I was mesmerized by these girls and boys who were uninhibited by any perversion of this world; they were laughing and singing and absoulutely EMBODYING the Spirit of Christ. They were just running in circles, happy as can be! These kids were truly worshiping in Spirit and truth and they had no clue! They had cracked the code to Canaan rest and they didn’t even know it. I could not help but tear up and their pureness and love. Oh, sweet children!

I have been talking to my friend recently about what it means to be a child of God. And, well, there you go. Just be a child. We so often fall victim to growing out of innocence. But kids are kids. They just run around and play and need their parents. Children are not jaded or cynical. Children don’t pretend to know; they just ask. Children bring nothing to the table. God took care of the hard stuff at the Cross and wants nothing more than for all of His children to come Home. We are kids: needy, little kids, but the Creator delights in us.  He loves answering us and playing with us. He loves being with us for the simple fact that we are His. The secret of being a child of God is to just be a child.  

“But the hour is coming , and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him.” [John 4:23]

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are…” [1 John 3:1]

“but Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.’” [Matthew 19:14]

What I am listening to:

"Learning How To Die" -Jon Foreman

"Samson" -Regina Spektor

"Best Day of My Life" -American Authors

"Wake Me Up-acoustic" -Aloe Blacc

The Art of Selling Out

My whole life, I’ve never had the guts to give the last effort. To take the last leap of faith that could mean crushing failure or riveting success. To completely go for something with everything I’ve got.

I think I have the same sixth sense that animals have when something significant is going to happen (ie. typhoon). However, unlike a cat or a dog, I don’t just run to higher ground; I go catatonic (I mean that I hibernate in my room and watch an unhealthy amount of Grey’s Anatomy…). A lot of big things have happened recently (I got placed as a Young Life leader at Oscar Smith High School, I’m starting classes at Regent, etc.) and I’m coming to a point in my life where faith isn’t just an unassuming object in my life anymore. I’m learning that the closer I walk towards Jesus, the more critically necessary He becomes.  I am learning the art of selling out.

Jesus talks about this a lot in scripture. Before great battle, what king hasn’t sat down to deliberate the 20,000? [Luke 14:31-33] And once we know some of the cost of following Jesus, we must, in good conscious, consider if we are willing to give it all: not whether we can give it all, but whether we’re willing to. For what salt lacking saltiness is of any use for the soil or the manure pile? [Luke 14:34-35] But the idea of giving it all, of really following Jesus, through the dark and the light, is scary.

One of my favorite worship songs is “Oceans(Where Feet May Fail)” by Hillsong United. The lyrics talk about calling on Jesus’ name when we are lead to waters deeper than we ever imagined: where our feet may fail, but His grace abounds. I imagine the storm that night, on the Sea of Galilee, after Jesus fed the 5,000. When Jesus walked to His disciples on the water. When they first worshipped Him as the Son of God. Imagine what it was like to see Jesus, a pillar of tranquility amidst the raging wind and the violent waves. Imagine what it was like for Peter (of little faith!) to get called out of the boat and, for a moment, conquer these same waters. Imagine what it could be like for us, to actually trust Jesus and walk with Him on the water: not just for a shaky moment, but an eternal lifetime.  “…to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” [Colossians 2:2-3] At first, this notion frightens me. I don’t have the guts. I could never walk on water. I am not good enough or brave enough or qualified enough to be a part of His great, redemptive Plan. But this is the beautiful part, the most beautiful part of any truth to ever be true. Since Jesus nailed our iniquitous debts to the cross [Colossians 2:14], we abide in Him, and He in us[1 John 4:13].  All we have to do is place our trust in the Son of Man. Follow Him with all we’ve got. Because we cannot do it. But Jesus can.

What I am listening to:

"Lake Yarina" -Josh Garrels

"Where Is My Mind" -Trample By Turtles(cover)

"How We Breathe" -Pinback

"Zebra" -John Butler Trio

"She's a Bad Mama Jama" -Carl Carlton

"Big Jet Plane(acoustic)" -Angus and Julia Stone

"You call me out upon the waters,
The great unknown where feet may fail,
And there I find You in the mystery,
In oceans deep,
My faith will stand"

verse from "Oceans(Where Feet May Fail)

"And Peter answered Him, 'Lord, if it you, command me to come to you on the water.' He said, 'Come.' So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when He saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, 'Lord, save me.' Jesus immediately reached out His hand and took hold of him, saying to him, 'O you of little faith, why did you doubt?' And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped Him, saying, 'Truly you are the Son of God.'" Matthew 14:28-33