why did Jesus come to save us?

a holy week reflection.

my calves sit bunched up on this cold floor. my legs become numb as I long for more… more of God. More of His word. More of the vastness of His love I have yet to explore.

another blog post. this time, not one of those cheesy poems that spill from my heart all the time. I do love sharing those with you too, though.

I want to talk about many things… I'd love to tell you my heart about what happened in my life this past week. Or what my lowest moment was and my peaks. But, I'll stick to what I feel led to share. Here's a little window of my heart as I reflect on Holy Week.

I invite you to take a special moment today to stop and ponder, to celebrate and seek.

This week we commemorate the week where Jesus would enter Jerusalem, the town where He'd breathe his last and shake off the past covenant in exchange for a new one - one much greater, paid for by His precious blood.

Jesus was a real human being. He had a personality and a soul like you and me. God let him live, really live, and walk among us. He wore human skin, grew up, and became acquainted with this life.
God knew that he had to make himself a man so he could show us the lengths to which he’ll go to dig into the soil of our hearts and show us who He really is.

He shows us that our lives and his no longer have to be worlds apart. We see who Jesus really is through the living Word of God.

He cried among us, crawled as a baby, and eventually would walk on shaky ground with his precious feet.

Weak and lowly. Walked hand in hand with man and grief. Wore humility and dignity before he wore a crown of thorns that should've signified defeat.

He was close to loss. He was close with change. Experiencing it at every turn. From Heaven to the dirt. From baby to boy. From man to Savior. From life to death… and back to life once again. From village to village with no place to lay his head, he battled with the idea of change at every step. Friends and family lost along the way. Miraculous healings met with grief-stricken villages the next day.

Hand in hand with man… with grief… with GOD all in the same breath. 

If you think about it, Jesus didn't have to live all those years. He could've been sacrificed at any moment. But it was at just the right time that grace appeared as the perfect exchange for our sins. God wanted us to know we have a Savior who can empathize with us through every single human circumstance we face.

So I guess the question is… Why did Jesus give His life for us?
How could a baby become the King who saved me?

Titus 2:13-14 reads "while we wait for the blessed hope, – the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that is his very own and eager to do what is good." 

This text shows us that Jesus gave his life too…

- redeem us from wickedness

- purify us as his possession

- and make us into individuals who are eager to do what is good

If you look around long enough, you can quickly see how every person falls short. We make mistakes, we mess up, and we disappoint each other. Picture this: your boyfriend betrays you and starts dating your best friend. Isn’t there this instant need for justice? For something to be done to punish that person?

Well, our God is a God of justice because the Bible says he is perfect.

The truth is, we have an inclination to choose other things over God. Our hearts are inclined to choose the wrong choice over the right one. And so, there has to be justice for that so that we can be brought near to Him. What’s the justice?

Jesus dying on the cross for our sins so our hearts could be reconciled back to His forever.

God came so we could be made His. He chose us so that we may choose Him to walk with. He knew the price he had to pay to make us his very own. That's why he came. To redeem us through the power of His blood and reconcile our hearts with him no matter the cost.

See, we've always been his, but he wanted the hearts he made to intertwine with his. He wanted to be brought near to our hearts like it talks about in Deuteronomy. And Jesus is the perfect picture of nearness that God always wanted - to walk with us and talk with us in real relationship with him.

”What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him?” Deuteronomy 4:4-5

Jesus also came with a mission. To do business with God to show the world and sin that… Ha! Yall lost!

Y'all lost, yet it's in the losing that we find our feet gaining ground. We are found in the profound.

I have been found in the profoundness of it all. My heart will continue to uncover the mystery that God brought his Son down to crawl as a baby before he became the man who could save me. 

What does Easter mean to you? Is it just another holiday with some guy running around in a bunny suit?
Don't let the world tell you what to believe, dig into what you believe yourself.

(note: I'm not trying to get myself too deep into theological beliefs, although I do love that stuff, I’m trying to keep it simple today)

read the rest here.