Almost 2 years ago now I went traveling with a certain Curt Vernon on a road trip the likes of which neither of us were very prepared for...once again god had much different plans than I did. I expected that this trip (living in a van for a year praying and loving on people we found) was going to be a lot of fun, that it was going to be a time of great growth and development, and that it was going to be easy...I was very wrong. Looking back I can now see that I should have known that if I was expecting growth and development that I should have known to expect to encounter trials of many kinds for the testing of my faith so that it might produce perseverance in me and a genuine faith that has been refined by the fire.
Long story short...throughout the whole trip God was exposing sin in our hearts and in our lives and he was using each of us to speak truth into the other's life, and in the midst of all of our conviction and desire for true repentance the enemy came in and twisted conviction into guilt, shame, and condemnation to bring disunity between Curt and I. It was a very difficult time which the Lord brought a lot of beauty out of as He promises to always do for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.
So that sets the stage for what is on my heart of God receiving us differently than we expect or feel we deserve. Somewhere in the middle of all of this God exposed a fear I had (of being rejected or cast off by God when I was in sin) by giving me a picture of what I thought that would look like. It was a picture of me "coming boldly before god's throne of grace to receive mercy in my time of need" and as I approached the throne I flung my face on God's lap and began to weep. As I did God the Father sat unmoved, cold, and apathetic. the picture really laid my heart bare and I knew that couldn't be the way that God really recieved me, but as I asked the Holy Spirit what it really looked like I just sensed that He was telling me that He would show me at the right time and for me to just wait...that I would know when it happened.
So...fast forward a couple of days, and I'm sitting in a living room with Curt, and my new friend Tommy Jaggers, and the woman he is now married to, and we are worshiping. Curt is playing the guitar, and we are each praying or singing along or something along those lines of what we call worship. Curt begins to play a song that he wrote called "How Could I..." which I will allow him to tell the story behind since it's his story and not mine, and as he begins to play this song something that still blows my mind to this day...The Lord began to give me what I have heard referred to as an open vision (almost like you are watching a movie or something play out in front of you through your mind's eye).
My eyes were closed but I saw everything in the room. I saw Curt playing guitar, I saw Tommy with head bowed praying and I saw his wife singing along with Curt, and as my eyes glanced around the room I looked down at the foot of my chair and I saw Jesus, kneeling in front of me with His face buried in my lap weeping. Suddenly, I saw that it wasn't Jesus who was the one reluctant to recieve me but that I was reluctant to receive Him. It made me very uncomfortable having Him just sitting there weeping over me, I was very taken aback and didn't know what to do. So...naturally, when I didn't know how to respond, I began to cry also.
Just then He began to look up at me with tears in His eyes, and it was then I realized He was crying because I had sinned, He wasn't crying because I had messed up, rather, He was crying because He loved me and He wanted me to come to him instead of running away in fear and shame. Then He pulled out a basin of water and just stared at me, waiting to wash my feet. He never spoke a word audibly, but His eyes said everything, I could just see His heart and feel it in His eyes. Then what began to happen between us was like the dialogue between Jesus and Peter in the Upper Room. "Never Lord, You'll never wash my feet..." , "Unless I wash Your feet, you will have no part in Me." Except I was not so quick to give in as Peter was I continued to argue and explain how unworthy I was and how wrong it was for Him to wash my feet until finally He spoke.
"I want to serve you, but you must humble yourself and allow Me to serve you. I want to love you, but you must humble yourself and receive My love. Don't argue with me any longer on this matter. I love you, having taken all things into account and knowing everything about you I have decided that I want you all for myself, and have chosen to love you with a love that keeps no record of wrongs and with a love that never changes. Let Me love you."I had to choose to physically lower my feet to the ground and allow Him to wash my feet, and after doing so He embraced me, and the vision ended. To this day it was probably the most profound encounter I have ever had with the God and am still at a loss when I think about it. It just doesn't seem real and it is hard to explain...I mean, I could smell Him...I could feel Him. My words do little justice to how amazing it all was, and to the God who would make Himself a slave to love a people ill-deserving of His love and His constant advances to woo them and to capture their heart. In these moments God serves us in ways that words cannot express and loves us beyond all reason and expectation.
So...I see in scripture that God not only loved people in a way that was outrageous and embarrassing, as we see with Him defying every social expectation by calling a tax-collecting "sinner" like Zaccheus down from a tree to eat at his house that night and be a "friend of sinners", but we also see Jesus receive other people's love and affection in a way that is unexpected. John, the Beloved Disciple, leans back against Jesus and rests his head on God's chest as they recline at the table of the Last Supper. Jesus gently and lovingly responds to the outrageous assertions and requests of James and John to sit at His right hand in Glory or to call fire down on a town for not being hospitable to them. Jesus reinstates Peter by asking him three times if Peter loves Him after Peter denied knowing Him three times. Jesus allows a prostitute to kiss and wash His feet with her hair and tears as He is eating with the socially elite and when they speak against her affection He says that she has "done a beautiful thing " for Him. When a woman is brought before Jesus, having been caught in adultery and deserving of being stoned according to the Law of God, God doesn't condemn her but tells her to go in peace after having silenced all of her accusers.
Throughout the Gospels Jesus constantly shocks and surprises me with his actions and His love for sinners like me. I can't fathom it or take it all in that God could love like this. It feels like the kind of thing that you read about in story books but that couldn't possibly be real, or at least that it couldn't possibly be for me...right? But.....this is the Good News.
"This is how we know what love is: that, while we were yet sinners, God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ to die on our behalf....He made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him....we were dead in our trespasses...but with the great love with which He loved us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ...and I am convinced that nothing can separate us from the love of God, in Christ Jesus our Lord...."
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