I remember the day as a young man I cut myself quite bad. My sister-in-law asked, how can you cut yourself so bad shaving. I don’t remember what I said to her, but I remember what I admitted to myself. It was because I was ashamed to look at myself in the mirror.
I was living in sin and running from God. That was before the night I knelt in my room all alone and gave myself to my Savior Jesus Christ. I was amazed as His presence filled the room as I wept and asked for his forgiveness. I was home where I belonged. The issue after that was never, have I been forgiven but rather how does God really feel about me. I know I am not worth anything, not educated or skilled, not athletic nor talented. I guess you could call me Mr. mistake, or ordinary guy.
Even when we would sing, “Jesus loves me this I know” there was still that small part of me that felt like I was not enough to be pleasing before God and certainly not to myself. It’s surprising how many of us feel this way. After our divorce or any of the countless other failures we suffer in life, can God still use me for his glory? Does he still want me close to himself? Oh, we hear the sermons of how God forgives us, and our sins are washed away but somehow this feeling stays with us.
It was like this with me until one day I was reading in Isaiah 53:11, where it tells us The Father looked to the cross and saw Jesus as he suffered there for my sin, and it says, “He was satisfied.” As I read this again and again, I was finally free indeed. I not only knew Jesus had forgiven me I also realized he had imputed or transferred his own righteousness to me. That it was no longer I that lived but now it was Christ living in me. If there had ever been a man pleasing before the throne of God that person was me. Not because of who I am or ever could be. But in Christ and Christ alone I now set secure and perfect in my place of acceptance and peace before God’s throne.
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