52. Tug of War

 For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with self esteem and self worth. My past is really what kept me tripped up. I didn’t see it then, but as I look back, I can clearly see the spiritual battle that raged over me while growing up. I often found myself wondering how in the world I ever escaped the dark path I was heading down. The real kicker was that I was not following Jesus for any of it. In fact most of my childhood into adulthood, I just didn’t want anything to do with Him. It wasn’t that I didn’t know who He was (my mom took us to church), but at some point in my life, I made a choice to live without Him.

After being saved, I have battled with the thoughts of my past, and I took it to the Lord often. I posed the question to Him, almost out of desperation, asking Him to show me why He loved me, after all I certainly didn’t feel lovable. But the Lord works in the most beautiful of ways when we are vulnerable and instead of giving me reasons WHY He loved me, He showed me how MUCH He loves me:

I saw an image of myself in a tug of war battle. My body was being used instead of rope and I was standing in the middle with both arms stretched out. On one end I saw, what I understood to be my past, grabbing and pulling and tugging at my arm, causing half of my body to be a mess as it continued to try to pull me and win the battle. No matter how frantically and desperately the things of life tried to take me, it was as if the footing continuously slipped and other than shaking me up, it was getting nowhere. The other half of my body was completely still and as I simply turned my head to look at what was at the end of my other arm, I saw the cross. In my spirit I understood in a whole new way that Jesus died on the cross for ME. The battle I had been facing when I was younger, no matter how real it felt, had already been won by the power of the cross. And because Jesus loves me so much, and despite the fact I had turned my back on Him….He was there the whole time. HE. Never. Let. Me. Go.

So often, during the messy times in our life, we tend to see only one side of the tug of war battle. The side that comes with the desperate attempts of life to wear us down. The side that is shaking us up and causing chaos, stress, anxiety, fear, bitterness, hopelessness, etc. But no matter what that side of the tug of war looks like, the TRUTH on the other side is the cross. It stands so confidently, with so much strength-never wavering that we can easily miss seeing it there to begin with. We never had to do anything to put it there-Jesus did that. All we have to do, is shift our focus from one side of the battle to the other. All we have to do, is turn our heads to see that Jesus has been there the whole time.

No matter what you are going through right now, what your past looks like, or what your future appears to be, or even how you feel about Him, I am telling you right now Jesus LOVES you and He died on the cross for YOU. And you are NEVER too far away to come back to Him.

My heart broke into a million beautiful and overwhelming pieces from the image of intense love I experienced that day. Sadly, people are the ones who will let go of Jesus just as I did. But if we never open up our lives to Him, we will never see that He is steadfast and true. We will never get to experience what true love is. We will never know about the victory we can walk in because of the cross, and we will never get to understand what it means to have Him on our side of the tug of war battles. If you have never made Jesus Lord and Savior of your life…today is a good day to do it! If you don’t know what that means or have questions, please reach out to me or someone you trust.

Because I love you….but HE loves you more.