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July 18, 2007
How Jesus' Love Captured My Selfish Heart
As a child, my parents and my community taught me many things about who God is and about His holy scriptures. They gave me strong morals and raised me to respect others, to honor and obey, and to live my life as a demonstration of worship to God. They also taught me about Jesus Christ and about his death and resurrection. I believed that this was true, and I accepted that this story was my salvation from spiritual death.
When I became a young man, I started to realize that even though I had all of these moral values I had a very poor record of living those morals out. I usually cared more about myself than others, and I lived a lifestyle of self-love and self-worship instead of a lifestyle of love and worship for God. I began to read the Bible and pray every day, but I was still unable to live the way I wanted to. I seemed to be unable to control myself. I began to wonder why it mattered that I live a moral life, what the meaning of my existence was, and why a holy creator God would care about whether I was moral. I began to create intellectual justifications for violating God’s law even though I claimed to be his worshiper.
During those years, some men who were leaders in my church began to give me training in God’s word combined with spiritual and emotional counseling. They opened my eyes to see how much of my life was filled with inconsistency about what I claimed to believe and how I chose to live. This made me very depressed and filled me with fear about what God might think about me. However, they also began to show me how Jesus death and resurrection had accomplished more than protection from spiritual death. It had also given me an eternal citizenship in the kingdom of God, a kingdom that was not a just future hope, but a present reality. His death represented a divine act of love done on my behalf, planned from the beginning of time, for the purpose of restoring my heart to the true worship of God. I began to see how the purpose of my existence was to worship God and the reason for living a moral life was to be restored to the true glory for which I was created. Jesus life, death and resurrection were God’s plan for fulfilling His own legal requirements by perfectly obeying His laws, by dying the death of a evil man to be substitute for me, and by returning from death, defeating the power of death over me. I stopped trying to just live a moral life, and I began to focus on the love that Jesus had already demonstrated to me.
Today, I understand that even though I still fail to love God with my whole life Jesus Christ has given me the gift of his perfect record, the gift of his resurrected life, the gift of his receiving the judgment of God in my place. Jesus loves me! Jesus is so much more than a moral teacher, prophet, or religious guru. He is the physical manifestation of the love God has for me. His love is for you also, if you will stop creating your own justifications for your self-worship and humbly cry out to God for help.
Following Jesus | By Kirk Ward | 1:08 PM
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Comments
It's funny that I should read this just now, I just finished crying out to God for help! Thanks for the reflective testimony Kirk. I love you!
Posted by: katiek at July 18, 2007 2:03 PM
"Jesus loves me! Jesus is so much more than a moral teacher, prophet, or religious guru. He is the physical manifestation of the love God has for me."
I can't tell you how much this testimony resonates right now. Like Katiek, I too was just crying out and found this post encouraging.
Wow, since this passport deboggle I have seen God move miraculously! Praise Jesus that God doesn't give up on His kids! Praise God that He really changes our hearts from which our actions flow! Praise God that he takes our vulnerability as an opportunity to show his loving strength!
Posted by: Heidi Vincent at July 19, 2007 11:50 AM
Thanks for your testimony, Kirk. How happy I am to have you as part of our family - for a godly husband for Sarah and father for Joanna!!
Posted by: Rinnie at July 20, 2007 9:31 PM
Thank you, Kirk. So grateful to read about what the Lord means to you. We thank Him often that He brought you into Sarah's life and into our family. Love, Mom
Posted by: Liz Meiners at July 22, 2007 3:31 AM