A Love Like Fire

So I make mistakes, a lot of them. It's something that I have thought about for when campers hit the docks, that I might get nervous and go on auto pilot and ask them standard questions, or not connect with the leaders as well as I would like to. Or maybe not that, maybe because of my own selfishness, I miss my chance to talk with the quiet kid. Any way you run it, all kinds of these scenarios have been going through my mind.

Or at school, a lot of times it will be "really? you want me to go up and talk to that guy? no, he looks busy. god you dont see, that guy is busy right now. "

Wednesday night of this week, I was thinking about the reading for the day, specifically the image of being at the foot of the cross. (Here comes my awesome lack of description skills) I'm there, both knees to the ground, hands in front of my face, and I'm just looking downwards towards my hands. Jesus is up there, looking right at me. This isn't some guy up there, this is the One who is perfect, and he is dying for me. For me. But when I look up towards him, my hands are empty. There is nothing that I can give, nothing I can do, to earn Jesus being up on that cross for me, and I am forever humbled by that image. Jesus' love is so pure, I cant even understand.

But through that, God picks me up off the ground, and doesn't see me for my inadequacies. I've been hearing so loudly lately, "Tyler, stop being afraid to mess up. You will mess up. And it doesn't matter, because I love you anyways, and my love for you has never come from you being perfect." I mean look at Peter, it took the guy years to live up to being called a rock.

And you know what, I do want to fail for my father. And outside of the summer, if I go up to someone in Santa Barbara to share what God has for them and I get rejected, I will gladly suffer, if that is what it takes to be constructed into a real man for God. What a blessing that is.

" On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” "
Matthew 9:12-13