Inseparable love

Image by Rudi Schlatte
Flickr.com_photos/rudis/2427705114_CC BY-ND 2.0

After a week of spiritual awakening the enemy sought to anesthetize me. Sitting around the campfire listening to stories of God's movement in the lives of my peers, I knew God had challenged me, too. He asked me to pick a side; His or the enemy's. 

You see, on the outside it appeared I was on God's team, but I held secrets behind closed doors; secrets that I'd never admit to anyone except my future husband. They were free-will liberties I regularly practiced. It was those secret liberties God asked me to lay down at the cross. And, it was those very same things the enemy used to accuse me that night.

"You're not good enough for God's team, are you? You're just a little liar, aren't you? Claiming you love Jesus, but doing as you please behind closed doors? God can't use you!  

You're dirty. You best stay on my team. You're not good enough for His."

I found the Accuser's words unshakable. Overwhelming. Shame and defeat enveloped me, threatening the Holy fire within me like a damp rag wrung over a an open flame until my heavy heart broke open.

Amidst my tears and uncontrollable sobbing, my peers and camp counselors surrounded me and prayed me through that darkness. Even while I slept, they kept vigil outside my cabin window, wielding the most powerful weapon of prayer and promise from Romans 8:38-39 (NIV):

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, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

"This is always the weapon that the weary and worn out can wield to silence the enemy's voice in our heads..." says Ann Voskamp in her newest book, The Broken Way (Zondervan 2016). "Because this is the thing: the prosecutor of your soul can't ever nail you. Time can't wreck your life. YOU can't wreck your life. Nothing in all the world can separate you from the love of Christ, and His love is your life. Your life in unwreckable. Because Christ's love is unstoppable."

The Accuser, fills our heads with lies, but the light Jesus brings, His promises and Truths, reveal to us that God's powerful and unrelenting pursuit of His children. He loves us with an everlasting, unrelenting, unstoppable love. He sees us, not through our dark secrets, but through the blood of Jesus Christ; the blood that forgave us our sins - past, present, and future. All God can see of those who believe in Jesus is how He created us in the first place. And, He gives us Holy Spirit to remind our forgetful souls of who He created us to be and to whom we belong.

Be encouraged. No matter where you find yourself today, or what you've done in the past, nothing can separate you from God's love. Call on Jesus's name and He will answer you.

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4:14-16 (NIV)