Crucified

I have been crucified with Christ it is no longer I that live but Christ that lives through me.

God will you grant humility? Will you burn a passion for you in my soul? May I know and proclaim the truth of Psalm 34...I sought the Lord and he answered me he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

God will you teach me the truth of all that and allow me to own it, to embody it, to experience the truth of being encamped around and tasting and seeing the goodness of you. God I long to seek you with this degree of intensity. Make me intense for the good things that are found in you. Place in me hunger for you.

You show me poverty yet you give me yourself. You show me who I am and yet comfort me, you place in me a hunger and fill it with that satisfying you. You have changed me with your gospel. Wretched I am and accepted I am. Geez! Can I see that always and have that keep me full of humiliation and boastfulness that the God of all creation has taken me from the filth of my heart and seated me before him. God has reminded me of the fact that while I was still as the stench of an open grave full of disease and slop, his son died in that moment and willingly humiliated himself and accepted the sentence of death and aloneness and pain and mockery and separation from you. He was crucified.

I am reminded of a simple song written by some students that grew up in the ministry I led at First Baptist Ferguson. It has a simple statement in the bridge that says, "My life is not my own." It is not my own it has been given away and a life has been given back to me that causes my face to be radiant and intense contentment and surreal and tangible euphoria to simmer in my heart and brain and life. God is good, I rest and bask in my crucifixion.

This life I lead is bigger than me, this marriage I enjoy is bigger than me, this father hood is bigger than me, the church I lead is bigger than me. I am thankful that it is. Because I am humiliated by who I am and in need of Jesus, who is faithful to meet my lackings.