Her eyes looked dark and vacant. She slowly sat down in a chair across from my desk, looked up, but wouldn’t look me in the eye. A single mom with two small children abandoned by her husband. Hurt and in need, she found herself in an interesting emotional predicament. There was a hole in her heart … a hole big enough to create a deep longing for safe community, yet she’d been hurt so deeply she couldn’t muster enough trust in people to begin the new relationship process.
To desperately long for something you’re terrified will hurt you is a heart wrenching, awful place to be!
The deepest love we can experience is to be fully known and still fully chosen.
So the games begin. She, like many of us, revealed a little of herself to see how someone would respond. Would she still be loved when others found out she’d gone through a divorce? What about being a single mom with two children? Will people still love her and want to be with her when they find out she is still bitter and badly broken? What happens when she falls apart and cries? When she loses her temper?
When people come through the doors of the church, at a very deep level they are all asking the same question: Am I safe? Can I really be fully known and still loved?
This is why Romans 5:8 is so powerful!
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Fully, 100 percent chosen and fully, 100 percent known. Every good and bad thing … known! It didn’t keep Him from giving His all for us, and He still keeps giving. Many can’t know the power of this sacred privilege until they struggle enough in life to understand their need for it.
In real Christianity the deep void of the heart often precedes Christ’s incomparable satisfaction. Unconditional love. Fully known and still fully chosen.
I have heard it said that Christianity is for the weak. I say yes, yes it is. It is for those who recognize their need for and desperately want to taste the deep satisfying love that only the sacrificial, selfless, loving Christ can demonstrate.
The deeper the relational intimacy, the deeper the risk … the greater the reward.