I am sitting here this Easter Sunday writing after getting done worshiping in my living room while my son is napping like I have done every Sunday since March last year. This Sunday is sad for me to not be in a church building, but also this year I feel even more grateful for what today represents for believers. When Jesus died, the curtain of the temple was torn allowing us direct access to the Lord through Jesus. We don’t have to go through a high priest in a temple or any place or through anyone in order to access the Father.
This year, though different from years past, the Lord grew me more than I have ever grown. I love the saying that Ruth Chou Simmons says, “you don’t have to be blooming to be growing.” I feel like this year was a year that this quote applied. I don’t feel like this year there were a lot of pretty blooms in my life, but there was pruning and there are roots that if it wasn’t for this year, I wouldn’t have.
I knew, because of some of the sacrifices we felt called to make to love and care for Ellis, I needed to be more intentional with Lord otherwise it would be easy to coast in my relationship with Him until things went back to “normal.” I also had this overwhelming need for Him to be more in my life than ever before with all that is going on in the world. I chose to be intentional with getting into the Word by doing Bible studies, by talking daily with an accountability partner, to try and memorize more scripture, and pray specific prayers. Sometimes, I wanted to just not do those things and just act like I knew it all (and being a new parent, I know I don’t know it all) and act like I was this great Christian without doing the hard work to grow. I am learning that most things that the Lord calls us to are not easy and doing the hard thing tends to grow you more than doing the easy things. In her Elijah study, Priscilla Shirer wrote,
“ We want the highlight reel, not the practice session. Not the years of hard work. Not the consistent pattern of sacrifice. Not the consistent pattern of sacrifice. Not the going over and over again of the same, repeated steps and movements. The stretching. The soreness. The getting out of bed on cold, sleepy mornings. The slow, slow walk of patience, whatever it takes to get it right….A close look at the hours of preparation, the years of hard work, the grueling cost required to get there are not what we came to see. So we conveniently ignore that part.”
I fight daily to not ignore the hard work it takes to be the kind of follower of Christ I want to be. I want to be the one that doesn’t just give the words of the follower of Christ, but the one that has the hidden battle scars that come with being a follower of Christ. The one that loves in word and deed. The one that doesn’t put on a show like the Pharisees did, but rather puts on humility in order to walk with the God that came to be a servant rather than an Earthly leader. Jesus doesn’t care for the fluff that I want to display sometimes. He doesn’t care about the outward things I do if my inward heart doesn’t reflect my love and trust in Him. Jesus doesn’t ask us to put on a show he asks us to come as we are with our sin and lay it at his feet at the cross. I am so glad we serve a God who loved us enough to come not in a huge elaborate way, but rather loved people who were unlovable, and who died so that I, two thousand years later, can walk humbly with Him all the days of my life. He doesn’t promise it will look pretty, like I have wanted it to look. He does promise there will be troubles, but I don’t have to walk them alone because the Risen King walks with me.
Binding My Heart 