If you’re like me, you are not thrilled with another round of tightening COVID restrictions and increasing shut downs. I was hoping we’d be over this by now! And if I’m not careful my “not again” mentality can easily slide into “this is hopeless.”
Which reminds me. Around the time that I turned 40 (quite some time ago LOL) I remember feeling so frustrated that the struggles in my heart were the same old struggles that had been infesting my heart back at age 25 and 30 and 35. Maybe not to the same degree, but there, continuing to cause relational damage nonetheless.
Still impatient. Still easily irritated. Still holding grudges. Still self-centered. In a nutshell, still far from the standard of love we find in 1 Corinthians 13.
“Not again! I thought I’d be over this by now! How have I not outgrown this weakness?” And my “not again” mentality often slid into “this is hopeless.”
The simple truth is that it isn’t a question of “weakness” or immaturity. It’s actually a lot more serious than that. It’s called sin. We’re sick with it. It’s chronic. It’s perpetual. And it’s terminal.
But it is not hopeless.
For those of us in Christ, we have a Father who completely knows us and still loves us even though we are still sin-sick. He is not a fickle friend who hits the road when the “real you” comes out. You aren’t too much for him to handle. He’s not disappointed you don’t have your act together yet. He fully knows yet fully loves.
“There is tremendous relief knowing that [God’s] love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am often so disillusioned about myself…” –J. I. Packer, Knowing God.
“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything” –Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage.
We’ve all got COVID-fatigue. Even worse, we’ve got sin-fatigue. But let’s not slide into despair. We are fully known. We are fully loved. That’s enough.
“The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; He knows those who take refuge in Him” (Nahum 1:7).”
Take refuge,
