My Heart

You know, at heart level, I am a very sentimental guy.  I love the conversations that reveal who you are and not just the nonsensical ones where nothing makes sense.  I truly enjoy investing into people.  There's always a part of me that desperately yearns for more in relationships.  And why not?  I practically invest all that I am into them to some degree only for the hope to see life being reaped out of their lives as well.  Then I turn to myself, something that I still learn and grow in, is loving myself as I love others.  "Love your neighbor as you love yourself" says my Savior.  I suppose in that aspect, in my whole life, I've been unbalanced in that.  My love for people had always been greater than for myself, I wasn't really ever a fan of me.  Now, honestly, I can say that I'm a fan.  I like myself.  Thanks to the healing love of Jesus Christ and His ministry towards my heart, I can seriously say that I like myself. And you know, since I left Medford to come back home to La Grande (I spent a year at a school of discipleship for those of you that don't know that), those well meaning people who have called me Knappy, just because that's how they know me, has caught me off guard.  It strikes me because, well, I'm Jordan now.  "Knappy" is an old identity, an old identity that isn't entirely Biblical.  In the sense of knowing scriptures, I'm a scholar.  In the sense of knowing spiritual truth that many don't even fathom because their pursuit of God is limited only to the weekly Sunday attendance.  In regards to self, though, I was the executioner, the judge.  Over myself, I held a list of my mistakes, I was able to tell you each of my mistakes and the day I did.  Doesn't love say it "keeps no record of wrongs?"  Was I like a person who James describes as "double minded, unstable in all that he does?"  That was me!  Until one immaculate and painful day that Christ revealed the death I was bringing to my life, until He lovingly showed me what kind of hate I was spewing over my life.  I mean, how can I say I love Jesus, and love others, yet unable to love myself?  Wouldn't that be the terrible "H" word hypocrisy?  Isn't that the worst thing one could be?  Say one thing, and do another.  Yikes.  But now... no.  Now, you are reading the words of a changed MAN.  A man who can see the good in me, who can see why people enjoy being around me.  I can see why people had the audacity to invest in such a broken man, because they saw the glimmer of light that was within me.  They saw with the eyes of Christ, not of the flesh.  "So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.  Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"  To those of you who lived those words and breathed those words over my life, I can't possibly thank you enough, yet I'm going to thank you. So, "Thank you!"  I'm sure you know who you are anyway, if you take a minute to see what you've really done for my life, in how you've loved me, in how you were Christ to me in some times.  There are far to many to number, yet your investment will reap a mighty harvest, and for that investment, Christ will reward you.
       Now... for you who are in that prison that I was in.  I have some words for you.  Yet, don't be afraid, for they are the words that have washed over me so many times and have stilled my heart countless times.  "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  As it is written 'For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.'  NO!  In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, NOR ANYTHING ELSE IN ALL CREATION (can you think of anything outside of creation?  Well.. God... but He loves you! =D), will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."  Romans 8:1,2; 35-39.  That condemnation thing?  No more, if you're condemning yourself, you're not living as Christ is in you; no bueno =(.  How about your feeling of not being worthy?  Christ has made you worthy by His sacrifice on the Christ!  And besides, it is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you.  Stop living in the mind set that God is the punisher, that He will kick you while you're down because you're a filthy sinner.  We are not sinners in the hands of an angry god; no we are children in the arms of a loving Father.  Don't let the view of yourself, how you feel about yourself "dictate" how worthy you are in Christ.  In Christ, who is your true identity, has made you more than worthy.  Look through the eyes of Jesus at yourself.  Look at the furious, amazing, powerful, unending love He has for you.  Oh, how He loves us.