Photo via Three Minutes to Nine: The Great Exchange

I’m so excited I can hardly contain it! This is my very first blog post! I may only get a handful of readers, but I feel famous of sorts. Not that being famous is my ambition. No, my goal is to make Him known!

It’s just pretty cool to share my heart, the depths of my soul, to people. In reality, most relationships outside of family are superficial and usually extend no more than a quick conversation of,

“Hi! How are you?”

“Just fine. And you?”

“I’m good. Well, it’s great seeing you! Bye!”

Not very intimate, do you agree? It’s my desire to keep it real on my blog posts. No games. No facades. I’ll share my dreams, my struggles, my good days and bad with you. You’ll quickly see I’m far from perfect, but I know the One who is!

Life is a journey. A great adventure. Each of us has a different call and purpose on our life, but… there is one we all have in common. Intimacy with God.

Just like the relationship I illustrated above, most of us have very superficial relationships with Jesus. He desires so much more than what we give Him. He so loves us, He gave His life so we can have life. Not just any hum-drum life, but an abundant life! A life worth living and dying for! He gave His all; we should give Him our all.

He desires intimacy with us, for us to ‘get real’ with Him. No games. No facades. He wants us to share our dreams, struggles, good days and bad with Him. He will make beauty of our ashes if we allow Him. He will trade our robes of weariness for a robe of righteousness and give us joy in place of mourning. [Isaiah 61:3] You see, when we are real, we only have ashes, weariness and tears to give Him. These aren’t great gifts for a King by standards we are accustomed to; however, in His kingdom, these are beautiful to Him. He keeps all our tears in a bottle. [Psalms 56:8] He is the great exchanger. Life for death.

So, let’s quit pretending and answer this question honestly. Are you giving your all to Him? He knows our hearts, so if we answer falsely we are only fooling ourselves. And if our honest answer is ‘no’, then my next question is ‘Why?’

Is it because we feel we aren’t good enough for God? Well, we will never be ‘good enough’ to approach the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But thank God He’s not evaluating our good selves versus our bad selves. He sees only darkness and light – darkness when we are tarnished by sins of our flesh and light when we are washed clean, without blemish by the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ. It’s the blood of Jesus that allows us to enter boldly into the throne room of God.

So, He loves us just as we are and we can come to Him just as we are. When we kneel before Him in all our filth and repent of our blood-stained hands and turn from the wicked intent of our hearts He forgives us. Simple as that. We don’t have to prove ourselves first or clean ourselves up before we turn to Him. That’s called self-righteousness. But with a love as gentle as a dove, He washes us head to toe, inside and out. Then He clothes us with His righteousness, for without Him, we are nothing. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. But in Him, and I mean when we truly abide in Him, well… He makes all things beautiful!