Grace greater than all that's within.

These feelings I posted about in my last entry, these labels and emotions, thoughts and realities, misconceptions and truths, all woven together; They show that I am human. That I am not perfect and we're all part of the fall.

They remind us of our flesh and our inability to save ourselves. We were created for His glory. To glorify Him and bring attention to Him. To love and be loved.

He made us whole, but we chose to be broken. He Holiness Himself wants us, fleshly sinful beings to commune with Him. He wants to put His righteousness in us. He wants us broken of our own flesh, but in the process He's making us whole again. Amazingly though He accepts us as we are. There are no worries of being misunderstood or judged or looked down on, but quite the contrary: With Him my My brokeness is accepted, my weaknesses understood. He sees the bigger picture. He knows the end. :O)

He sees our human state and He embraces us. He sees the lovely, when all we can see is the ugly. He calls, He calls us to come to Him, to dine with Him, to behold His glory and bask in His love. He doesn't ask for us to clean ourselves up first, He doesn't ask us to be presentable. He has no interest in "looking good" or "covering up". He only knows truth. He asks for us "as is". Knowing all the broken pieces and the pieces that are missing. He knows the wholeness that can become of that broken puzzle when He gets ahold of us. He recreates, restores, and makes new.

But are we willing? It takes something beyond us, beyond our flesh, it takes a death of self, a death of what we think things should be. A death to our expectations, a death to the plans we have made. It takes an acceptance of grace, an acceptance of ourselves. It takes us chosing to See through His eyes. To see His point of view, to believe what He says is true even when nothing seems that way.

He calls, He whispers, He shouts, He pursues, He waits. He lets us make choices. He knows the sacrifice of dying. He walked that road, He carried that cross, He became Human so we could become Holy. That's the beauty of grace. He wipes our slate clean. Not a slate that He keeps. He doesn't keep record. It's our slate. It's the slate of failure, the slate of sin, the slate of all the lies that we hear. The one we dangle over our head. He breaks that slate, He breaks it over and over and over and tells us His truth. He keeps our tears in a bottle; He remembers not one of our confessed sins.

To see the beauty among the ashes, to see the hope among the hopeless, to see the truth among the lies. This choice, it takes sacrifice. It takes acceptance of ourselves "as is" and it takes the willingness to keep trusting, to keep yeilding, to keep surrendering. Only He can do all those things in us. We have to choose.
He gave it all so we could have it all. All His beauty, all His hope, all His faith.
"Because of that we can have hope. We can trust. We can have faith. We can love.
I struggle and resist this grace. I feel that when I'm weak I'm unworthy. It starts this spiral of self-pity, self-loathing, self-focus. Lies from the enemy and I often go with them. But slowly I am listening to Jesus, hearing Him calling me back to Him. To faith and strength and God focus. And when I ask He forgives every sin, remembers not on.
To look above myself and deep inside myself to find Him, find rest, to find myself. I long and cry out and ask this of Him. I do have hope. Even if it's just flashes of light and then it's dark. I know that light is there.
So Jesus help me to light a candle instead of lie down and sleep in the darkness. Help me to see You. Help me to see You in me. Grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all my sin. Grace that covers, like a blanket, it falls on us. Help me Jesus to choose that grace and allow it to cover me.