The Ultimate Alternative

I am discouraged when God does not fix people right away. When I pray in faith and really mean it and then nothing happens. I open my eyes, check in on the thing I prayed for and everything has stayed the same. Corey Russell during our Burn class made the point that God has not come to fix things, but to create relationships with us. This has stayed with me and started a battle within. Its truth stings the very same spot as my frustration over "failed prayers.” It involves patience and I’m really bad at sitting and waiting. John 3:17 says, “God has not come to condemn the world, but that it may be saved through Him.” This tells the reason for Jesus’ visit to earth. He came to break bondages. He walked the cities to bring the Word of His Father to the hopeless and in the end suffer so that sinners may live. How nuts is that. He brought the ultimate alternative—the truth of humanity.

I never understood how life could be limited to an average 80 years (a super star if you pass 100). I refuse to believe that we are born, master the art of communicating, learn to bake a cake and peel an orange only to end up in a wooden box you can buy at Costco. There must be more than this. And there is. His name is Jesus. A third of the Trinity brought down in the form of man to destroy death and its modern day “no big deal’ viewpoint. We don't just die and become skeletons. There is Heaven or Hell. And they are both very real. There is eternal beauty or forever suffering in the lake of fire. He brings a way that has true purpose. Why would anyone pick 80 years over forever in a Garden with no pain or tears? All He asks is to give Him us. Give up attempting to control ourselves (and failing) and to let Him take care of us.

He's asking for my burdens. He's asking to hide my anxieties in Him. It's so simple and yet I so often am reluctant to release control. I instead fall to believing in flesh, that I can be better at life than God who created all things. I am a living testimony of what the power of God can do to a person. From death I came into life. I was empty. The black sheep that He washed white as snow. This is not said to boast in my transformation, for only God can have that glory. This is to fall humble before my Beloved. How can I sit here knowing what God has done for me (I've only brushed the surface into His all-consuming heat) and believe that He cannot do it for others? I have a spirit of pride in me when I believe that my entire being can turn from sin and obey the righteousness of God, but another walking in darkness cannot do the same. Who am I to minimize the power of the living God? His task is to save. His desire is for a relationship with the very thing He made. He does not obey by our time. His plan is perfect. Let not man step in the way of the Maker restoring communion with the broken.