everything i need.

What are you doing with your life? i don't mean where are you going or what are you going to be doing, but at this point in your life right now, what in the world are you doing with it? It's no easy question. It tends to kick me in the gut when i pose it to myself. The reason why i ask it is not to be the cause of guilt, but to be the hopeful impetus for some real thinking on your part, because if you are anything like me, you find that it is frighteningly easy to get to a point when you realize that life happens very quickly, regardless of whether you're making the best of it or not. Regardless of whether it has real meaning or not. But the kicker is not actually the question i posed, but really another statement that encompasses that question: Forget the past, and start living. Realize that new beginnings await the turn of every corner, the bend in every curve, the depths of every valley, and the peak of every mountain. Have a heart change.

Now, that paragraph may contain some truth, but the problem with it is that it's the same thing people have been saying for centuries, even millenia, and to no avail. It's the kind of thing that is extremely easy and intuitive to write, and maybe even to read, but in practice it is absolutely impossible.

Unless.

Unless you realize that it is impossible. Unless you realize that you cannot ever hope to accomplish heart change and real living. By yourself. Because when you and i come to a point when we realize the depths of our own futility, then the overwhelming knowledge that comes from that is our need. Our need for help.

Jesus said, "I came that they might have life, and have it to the full." That's the reason He came and accomplished what we cannot ever hope to accomplish! And that is also the single thing which separates Christianity, real Christ-centered Christianity, from everything. At the center of what Jesus said is nothing about what we do. In fact, the center of His message was the very fact that we can't. We can't be good on our own. We can't live life with meaning. We can't be righteous. That's why He took all of our sins upon Himself on the cross. At that point God looked at humanity, even in the depths of our sin, and saw Jesus as the fulfillment of His wrath. What we could never satisfy--namely, God's demands for holiness--Jesus completely satisfied.

"Listen to me, you stubborn of heart.,
you who are far from righteousness:
I bring near my righteousness; it is not far off,
and my salvation will not delay."
~Isaiah 46:12,13

i talk alot in this blog about the way we should love others and love God, but i've been struck recently about the other side of that equation. How do we receive God's immense love? So often we try to limit it and decide what we think we deserve from God. We look at our own faults and shortcomings and we have no idea how the God of the entire universe could love us. And yet He does.

So now, the question becomes, "Are you allowing God to give your life meaning?" He will. And meaning is what we all yearn for. We look for it everywhere, we find it temporarily in many things. But in our most honest moments we know that those things often leave us with an even deeper longing than we had to begin with. The craziest thing is that the longing we have for true meaning in our lives doesn't even compare to the passion God has for us to come to Him.

Wow.