Testimony: God is good.

One of our favorite parts of our internship at Wesley is just spending time with the staff, especially during Thursday staff meetings. It's our last "workday" of the week and we share what the Lord has done, what we think He is up to, and even stand before each other and confess that we are broken and need each other's prayers. I think it has now officially become Family Time... and that resonates deeply within me.

Every week it blows me away. Every week there is testimony of healing, words of encouragement, the Lord speaking and breaking through the darkest places with His promises. I can't describe how amazing it is to live in a place where the kingdom is actually breaking through from heaven to earth. We have not arrived, but we are seeing Him. He is bringing us to the core of what it means to be rooted and established in love. He is uprooting the things He did not plant, and shaking us free of what hinders.


We a friend, Dominique, who I have seen tangible growth in. He is really running after Jesus. I heard that, when people ask him how he's doing, instead of a blanket response, he says, "I'm living far above the norm." I wonder what it would be like if we could all say that with confidence. The world would shake. The Bible says that Jesus was anointed with the oil of joy far above his companions, and I wonder why many Christians are just as sad and empty as everyone else. It's one thing to claim Christ, to even be saved; it's another thing to be madly in love with Him, and to from that love, walk in confident obedience. It does not mean that life will be easy--Jesus said that, even though he overcame the world, there will still be trials. We are still humans spending this lifetime processing our new lives, working out our salvation. But HE IS SO GOOD.

The other day I came to a moment of revelation--that whenever I mess up, I no longer have to feel shame or guilt. Sometimes I allow myself to feel those things because I believe I deserve it. And in my flesh I do. But Jesus doesn't deserve it. There's a quote with a great back story, and it goes like this: "May the Lamb receive the reward of His suffering!"

So what's the reward of His suffering?

It's not just taking the gospel to the nations.

A friend recently told me a kind of parable of a man who spends his whole life, after coming to know Jesus, bringing man after man to His feet, leading so many people to the Lord. He comes before God at the end of his life, and with a tinge of bitterness in his voice, says, "There's your treasure." And God looks at him and says, "You missed it the whole time. You were my treasure."

I know it sounds cliche, but it's true. The reward of His suffering is not just salvation--it is abiding in His love, being set free, living in grace, being transformed into His image, and bringing people into His presence. This week I realized that not only Jesus' body, but His soul, was made an offering for sin. His thoughts and His feelings were broken for us. In Genesis, when God breathes life into man, only after He breathes life into man does man become a soul--a truth that implies that our soul was made for life and not death.

All this to say... we pray that He radically transforms your heart, your mind, that you may be rooted and established in love, that only as You delight in Him would you receive the desires of your heart. Whatever we have received, may you receive it tenfold, and then give it away.

He is madly in love with you. Walk in it.