The Crushing

I really enjoy new Christian music. It used to be that I didn't care for it very much, mainly because I didn't know what the good stuff was. However, I have been listening to more and more of it. Recently I heard a song by the David Crowder Band that starts out:

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

As I sat there listening, I began to wonder, "Just how often do we feel the weight of God's love on us? How often do we really understand that God does not want us to 'be ourselves', but to become what He desires us to be?"

You see, God does not call us to be "happy" in the way the world refers to it. He does not even want us to "be ourselves." God wants us to be His, and His alone. He wants us to be His so much that we are willing to give up anything, anything to do so.

Recently I posted on Facebook:

I am convinced that God wants to crush us. Not with fear and difficulty (though He will use that too if necessary), but with the weight of His love and mercy.

It is to brokenness that we are called. Crushed into nothing by Him so that He can put us back together how we ought to be. Being crushed is the only way we end up whole.

What better way to be turned to dust than by the enormous weight and gravity of the love and mercy of God?

That is what I believe the world finds so hard to accept. In society being crushed, being broken, being destroyed, are all bad things. There are no good connotations associated with them. But in God's eyes, they are exactly what is needed. We are put to death at baptism. We are killed because there is no other way to be raised as a new creature, as God's own child.

Instead, the world tells us that God doesn't (or shouldn't) care about our sins. If something is difficult to resist, then God doesn't care, and we can go ahead and do it anyway so long as it doesn't "hurt somebody else." But that is not what God calls for. He calls for our lives to be so enveloped by Him that we give up our choice to sin. Not out of fear or terror (though He will use that if needed), but out of love for Him.

God wants us to feel the enormous weight of His love and mercy. A love and mercy that forces us to recognize who He is. He is the God of the Universe. The Creator of All Things. He is the Almighty. He is I AM.

Yet He has gone through torment and death to save us from ourselves.

So the next time you are tempted by something, remember that you can stop yourself. Whether it be telling that little lie or excessive drinking or homosexuality or listening to what you shouldn't or lusting remember that you have given your choices to God. As Christians our choices are no longer or own, but we have voluntarily given them to God who saves us.

We are crushed to be recreated whole. We are broken to be properly fixed. We will still mess up, but only when we insist that our choices are ours. When we do fall, He is there to restore and rebuild us. He always will be.

But we must also give ourselves to Him. Not just in part, but wholly and completely.