"What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a "law man" so that I could be God's man. Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that. Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily." (Galatians 2:19-21 MSG)
I've been talking lately about becoming different. Different because of the way He looks at me. Different because of the way I'm drawn to Him. How can I have not been drawn to Him all along? Why have I ran from such great Love?
I've ached and yearned for this undying, unwavering affection from someone more than me. Initially, I put this burden of providing such a love on my dad. I thought I needed the affection from him to sustain me. Now I'm starting to realize that he was never meant to. It isn't humanly possible.
I don't want to respond to the love God is offering me in the same way I did 6 years ago. I want it to be a genuine reciprocation. Something I don't have to work so hard for because its innate. Something I don't feel pressured into doing. I don't want to do it to impress.
I need Him simply because I'm dead without Him.
Amen.
