No other arms

This morning in church, we sat behind a couple who have five adorable children, the youngest of which is 2.  For some reason, she just wasn't having any of the nursery this morning.  There was a tearful seperation which didn't last long, as she was miserable. The nursery workers understand that sometimes we just need our parents.  Her dad went up and tried to stay with her, but she wasn't buying any of that, so he carried her into the service. She was clutching on to him so tightly that she was wrinkling his shirt with her two little hands filled with the material.  Her tears were still in her eyes as he carried her to his seat.  Her grandmother saw her and tried to take her from his arms, but again, she gripped even tigher and buried her head in his chest.  She never moved.  She stayed that way through the entire worship service; clutching his shirt, head buried in his chest, until I noticed something.  Her grip began to loosen and her body became limp.  She had fallen asleep. Her fear was gone.  Her confidence returned because of being held in the secure arms of her dad.  She could relax, and rest. She totally showed me an amazing picture of God.

God is our father.  We never want to be seperated from Him or feel that He is not near.  When we do feel that distance, we need to run to His arms and lay our heads on His chest.  It is safe there.  When the world tries to take us from His arms, we need to hold on more tightly and bury our faces in His chest.  See, when her head was against His chest, she couldn't see anyone around.  All she could hear was His heartbeat and in that place, there was rest, peace, security.

Today we are celebrating the fact that Jesus gave His life for us, and rose again so that we could gain access into the Holy of Holies.  We can now run into His spiritual arms, rest on His chest, hear His heartbeat, BUT we, like this little girl, need to shun off anything that wants to take us out of that rightful place.  What would life be like if we never left the grasp of the Father?  I know that today I saw an amazing picture of how much my heavenly Father loves me - so much that He gave His son - for me. For you.

When was the last time you heard His hearbeat?

The Cup

This morning in our worship service at church, we sang one of my favorite worship songs and it has a line in it that says “I want to sit at your feet, drink from the cup in your hands….” and when I got to the “drink from the cup in your hands”, I had to stop.  Drink from the cup in His hands.  See, sometimes I wonder if we really understand what we are singing.  What is that cup? What’s in that cup?  Is it water, because if that’s what the drink is, I’d be okay with that, but what if it isn’t?

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed, “Let this cup pass from me”.  There had to be something really bad in that “cup”.  The cup he was praying about wasn’t a literal cup, but he was asking God to not make him “drink from that cup”. My former Pastor, Dan Betzer, used to preach an incredible sermon on the cup.  He said that the cup could have contained all the sins of the world.  Jesus, being sinless, was sent to earth to drink that cup containing gossip, murder, abuse, lying, rape, incest, slander, thievery, and the list goes on.  It had to be swirling around in that cup like thick, ugly, sludge.  Jesus, the Spotless Lamb of God, figuratively took that cup and put it to his lips and drank, filling his body with every sin known to man so that he could be sacrificed once and for all to make atonement for OUR sins.  OUR sins.  That cup was not something I could easily “drink”, yet I easily sang that song.

The next line in the song is “lay back against you and breathe, feel your heartbeat. Your love is so deep, it’s more than I can stand, I melt in Your peace, it’s overwhelming.”  I think we often think of the cup as filled with love – and it absolutely was – but not the warm fuzzy, chocolate heart kind of love.  It was the painful, sacrificing kind of love.  When we were not loveable, God sent His Son, Jesus, to drink from that cup. 

Phillippians 3:6-11 says, "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.  That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering, being made comformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." Today I was reminded of the incredible sacrifice Jesus made for me and I pray that I never easily sing these words without meaning them.