Saying "Yes" To Jesus

“How deep the Father’s love for us. How vast beyond all measure. That He should give His only Son to make a wretch His treasure.”

I absolutely love this song. It is so true of my life. Throughout the past few months God has overwhelmed me with radically amazing love. I don’t deserve His love. Like ever. Every single day I will mess up, say something completely stupid, or not represent Christ in the way I should. But still everyday Christ will pour out His love to me in some way. It may be through the beauty of His creation taking my breath away, someone totally random coming up to me and encouraging me, or just laughing until my face hurts with friends. Now why on earth would I deserve this when I fail Him over and over?

His love is crazy. He is crazy about every single one of us. We have stolen His heart. In the NKJV, we ravished His heart.

“You have ravished my heart,
My sister, my spouse;
You have ravished my heart
With one look of your eyes
With one link of your necklace.”
Song of Solomon 4:9 NKJV

The definition of ravish of is “to fill someone with intense delight.” That is just so crazy to think about to me! That even though I sin, mess up, and take the glory for myself instead of giving it to Him, I still fill Him with intense delight!!! WOW!!

“I will not boast in anything, no gifts, no power, no wisdom. But I will boast in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection!”

These past few days instead of me filling Jesus with intense delight because of His radical love, He has been filling me and filling me with intense, refreshing, overwhelming love, joy, and delight. These past few days have been sweet, sweet times of fellowship with old and new friends and priceless and much needed alone time with my God. He has blessed me with so many things in the past and is continuing to bless me. But He also challenges me and stretches me beyond what I think I can handle.

I have just now gotten comfortable and getting used to college life. Ha! That’s usually how it works, isn’t it. You get comfortable doing something or get in a good routine and BAM! God calls you right out of that sweet little comfort zone. At least, that’s how it works for me. Since I have gotten all comfortable and settled, God has said “Allison, I want you to do….” Um.. Say what?! I was sitting there for at least twenty minutes arguing with the Lord (not out loud, thank you) about why I should NOT be the person to do the particular thing He wanted me to do. But every single time I would think about it, mention it, hear it mentioned I would get immediate butterflies all in my tummy. 

So I invoked my mom's 24 hour rule. You pray about something for a solid 24 hours and whatever the Lord tells you, you know that's what you need to do. So for that solid 24 hours I argued and argued and the Lord just gave me the same verse over and over again. 

"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you
My power is made perfect in weakness.'
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness,
so that Christ's power may rest on me."
2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV

Praise God that I can mess up and make a fool of myself because when I make a fool of myself, Jesus shows up and shows off through those weaknesses. Whatever I feel like I'm lacking if I trust God, then He will make Himself known through my weaknesses. Why would I say no if He is going to show up through me and make Himself known. That's what I really want for my life, for Christ to be more and me be less. So because Christ's grace issufficient for me, then I will say "yes" to Jesus. Sometimes I will kick and scream and throw a fit but I will say "yes." 

I'm terrified about what God has called me to do right now. It is waaaayyyyyy outside my comfort zone but I'm also excited to see what God is going to do. I know that it will be hard but it will be so worth it! Jesus is so worth it!

"Why should I gain from His reward? I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart, His wounds have paid my ransom."
​