Does Jesus Love Me?

     One of the children’s most devious cut downs in our home is the phrase, “You’re not a Christian.”  This comment is used as a derogatory phrase when someone’s behavior is not Christ like.  The irony in all of this is that telling someone they are not a Christian in a mean and spiteful way is also not Christ like.  So, it is a mess all the way around. 

      Chris and I have to point out the lack of love the other child is also displaying.  We have to expose the disease that infects all of us, sin.  Like Mr. Legality in Pilgrim’s Progress, the offended child is looking for the keeping of the law. Show me your righteous deeds and I shall pronounce you Christian!  Like the older son in the parable of the prodigal son, they desire to show their own righteousness to earn favor and grace.  They do not want to see the prodigal restored, they want to see him turned out.

     We cannot escape it.  It pervades all of our souls.  Sin, our utter inability to do anything righteous on our own.  One of my daughter’s first memory verses was “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.”  She pulls it out with pride whenever anyone wants to know what James 2:10 says.  It states the problem we all have.  And it makes us think of the accounting that is inevitable.

      The end game is what changes our life now.  What do we think will happen to us at the end of our life?  The end is coming for us all – with fear or with hope. 

      My son loves Bible prophecy.  All of the “gloom and doom” passages in Scripture are his favorite.  And yes, Revelation is at the top of his list.  When he was about 6 or 7, he would regularly predict that Earth had five years left before her destruction.  Forget 2012 Mayan predictions and numerology, five years that was it.  The predictions became as common as, “pass the potatoes please”.  We just came to ignore it.  But that little boy was in earnest.  He saw the sin of the world around him and even as a child, he knew what the Bible said about sinners. He just put the two together and said, “Five good years guys, that’s it!”

     We have now survived those five years, and we have not stoned our son for his wrong prediction.  He has softened in his end of the world prophecies.  He sees that he is just like everyone else.  He trusts in the mercy of God.

      All of my children must come to a reckoning in our home at some point because we speak so often of God as Creator, of Jesus as Savior, and of man as a sinner.  They know they need to get something right, but what and how?  And so, Chris and I apply the healing anecdote of the gospel whenever questions about salvation, judgment, and eternity come. These moments can be big or little.  They can even come while singing a lullaby.

     “Sing me a song Mommy, I am afraid of the dark,” he said with tears streaming down his face.  After three attempts at finding the right good night song he said, “sing me Jesus, Mommy, sing my Jesus”.  And so, I sang him “Jesus Loves Me”, and his tears stopped. He calmed down and looked at my eyes while I sang that old children’s hymn, like a prayer.  May he know that Jesus loves him, enough to die for him.  May he know this, not because of a feeling, or because he is in a Christian home and attends church, but because the Bible tells him so.  May the fear of the dark cause him to be drawn to the light.                                   

     I need to know that Jesus loves me too.  And when I ask, Do you love me Jesus?, He takes me to where He died.  The place of my unbelief, my love of sin and this world, is the same place where He said, I must die for you or you will never come.  I too grew up in a Christian home, and attended church as a child.  But, He knew I would need to understand His love for me apart from me “doing the right thing”.   

     When I wonder if His love for me is real, I see myself standing before the cross, covered in my own filth, “all my righteousness deeds are like a polluted garment”. His blood runs down the wooden beams, the perfect man, gasping and heaving over and over even while my name is on His lips.  And I want to leave, I want to hide.  But like Peter, I hear my spirit say, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” I know that it was my sin that held Him there. And then the words come, “It is finished.”   The great exchange has taken place.  “My life is hidden with Christ in God.” He fulfilled every law of God that I could not.  He atoned for every sin that I could not.  He made me come to Him when I could not.  He drew me with cords of love and tightly bound me to him.  His life is entwined with mine.   There is no love like this on earth.  I know that Jesus loves me.

      I identify with my children’s struggle of knowing whether or not Jesus loves them.  I need to breathe the prayer, “O love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in Thee” to “shake off my guilty fears”.  O what a rest sublime for the weary soul that comes to Him!  May you find a place of rest for your burdened soul in Him today.

 ~ Your Fellow Sojourner

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go

1. O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

2. O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

3. O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

4. O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

Words by George Matheson