AMAZED am I. I cannot believe that God should
choose to use a person like me to do his Sovereign work.
I cannot honestly understand it… when I’m being
honest… when I’m not prideful and thinking God’s lucky to have me. Yet if it
wasn’t for Jesus I’d be ruined. He’s not lucky to have me; I’m
incomprehensively blessed because of him.
I cannot credit it… when I’m being honest… when
I’m not deceived into thinking ‘my obedience’ is a credit to me. ‘My obedience’
is my privilege to respond; and, being Christian, my responsibility of response.
I cannot hope to look at Jesus who hung on the
cross for me… when I’m being honest… when I’m not pretending I’m already super
close to Jesus. Yet despite my oft-deception, Jesus looks at me with such
amazing love, despite my offence.
I cannot comprehend that a hurt and
fundamentally fallible man like me… when I’m being honest… makes a good servant
of the living Lord. I’m more a barrier to his Kingdom than I could ever help,
but God, so gracious, so gentle and so kind, gives me this thing to do — to
serve him — because he knows it’s all I can do. I can do, and have, nothing
else. So wonderful is his grace that he dignifies someone so irretrievably
lost. In him I’m found. In him is my purpose. And in him I’m complete!
I cannot reconcile it in my own mind, let alone
synthesise its resonance in my heart… when I’m being honest… when I’m not
holding and keeping others to a Jesus standard I myself cannot hold or keep.
Oh, how rotten through am I! Yet, never rejected like I reject others, Jesus
loves me with an unconditional acceptance.
I hardly believe that Jesus has his work for me
to do… when I’m being honest… when I actually understand how privileged I am to
love… when I’m not lost in how wonderfully pastoral my love is — ‘my love’,
which is not mine at all, but the Saviour’s. I have little love that isn’t
self-centred or a skill. Without Christ my ‘love’ would be indelibly shallow.
I cannot boast in a thing that I offer God in
the work I do. The cross levels my pride and shows me how much loss Jesus
suffered; I cannot come close to the cross without being awed and backwashed in
wondrous grief and grievous gratitude. The scale of the cross and its eternal
significance. I cannot in all honesty look. The truth blazes holes in my eyes
right through the back of my head. Yet because of the cross I’m irrevocably
saved. I cannot understand this but I can accept it.
How loving is God that he uses broken vessels
to bequeath his love. What divine love that a broken vessel like me has value
in the Kingdom of God. The supremacy of value in Jesus Christ alone.
***
In eternity there will be only one
boast: our Lord Jesus Christ.
I boast in too much that is not
God. And daily be my lament as I choose to repent.
Lord,
contain my bragging boast,
Make me
boast only in you,
Make me
love your rugged cross,
Make me live only a life that’s
true.
© 2015 Steve Wickham.
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