without hesitation.

I’ve been learning a lot lately about what it means to give everything, and to give without harboring resentment nor any regard to whether it’s convenient to give or not. Today I’ve been reading in Second Corinthians and in chapters eight and nine, Paul begins talking about generosity and what it means to truly give everything with genuine willingness, even and especially when it’s difficult. 

A perspective the Lord gave me while reading the multitude of ways we can give generously in these two chapters, is the fact that we are also called to give our testaments of the Lord generously. “The word ‘testimony’ in Hebrew, is ‘aydooth,’ meaning ‘do it again with the same power and authority.’ Every time we speak out, or read a testimony, we are saying Lord, ‘do it again’ with the same power and authority.” There is so much power in that.

However, it can be really difficult to share testaments of what the Lord has done, or is doing, because in this the Spirit invites us into vulnerability. He invites us also to humble ourselves enough to say: I am not perfect. He calls us to come before Him and lay at His feet what we can’t save ourselves from. Doing this makes me feel weak and dependent and exposed and disgusted with myself. But the Father sits me up, brushes the tears from my eyes and gently proclaims that I am enough anyways, simply because He has crafted me and called me worthy. He calls me worthy in my failures; He calls me worthy in my ugliness; He calls me worthy when my heart is split open and exposed for Him to see and to stitch back together after redeeming my imperfection and crushing my pride. 

Vulnerability is difficult, but it allows us to be real, and we are meant to come to the Father with all of our imperfections. He literally died so that the Spirit could dwell within us and we could come into His presence without being holy or making a sacrifice to Him. We are each a living sacrifice. My Creator has been teaching me that I don’t have to fix myself or even be on the right track before coming to Him, because He’s the only one who can truly fix me anyways. I used to think that I was genuinely unworthy of love because I don’t have everything about myself figured out.

How twisted I had it. How sweet it is that I get to come before my Savior and kneel at His feet with everything I have, raw and on display, knowing that He is the only one who could know every bit of my heart, the only one whom my heart isn’t too much for, and the only one who could ever save me. He is my only way to salvation and He absolutely longs to save me even in the midst of my mistakes. He feels the same way about each of us. 

Luke 7:36-50!!!! 

In sitting with the Lord, I have begun to realize that I entered into the Race with a heart posture of giving everything, but I haven’t been intentionally continuing to check my heart with the Father in this aspect. I haven’t been the most transparent or vulnerable with my squad nor my team as I can be. I’ve sat in isolation, clinging to heartache and difficult things the Lord has been growing me in and I’ve been holding in shame that the enemy poisons my thoughts with, right there with the rest of it. 

However, the Lord has brought me so much freedom in the fact that I get to be authentic and vulnerable with anyone and everyone the Lord places in my life, and I get to seek out deeper relationship with my brothers and sisters in Christ by exposing my faults and leaning on my people so that they can continuously point me back to the Father. 

In this blatant authenticity, you never know how you may inspire others, or show others that they aren’t alone in something, or especially that they aren’t any less loved or worthy in the eyes of our Redeemer. That they can bring gritty, natural, and human things before Him and the darkness in it will flee in the light of His presence. 

We were made for relationships, and to expose our scars and wounds to one another, and sit with each other in the midst of pain and in the midst of the King of kings. Even in the discomfort that can come with this, we get to own our thoughts and emotions and experiences and we get to use them to spread the love of the Father. We get to see beauty in the messiness of this wild life with the Lord and we get to rejoice in the joy we have in Him because of it. 

Thankful for how much I value real, raw, natural, and authentic things. Thankful that I have a desire to embrace the richness of this life in pain just as well as in happiness. Thankful that I only want what’s real and whatever emotions may come with it. 

Psalm 139!!!! The first verse in this psalm says, “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me.” He has searched us. This means He wants to know every bit of us, and that He does. Praise God that He wants every bit of each of us, without hesitation.