I told God in a prayer tonight that I didn't want to think about the fact that I'm actually worse than I am. I told God that I knew this was true, but I just didn't want to think about it to the point that it made me thankful to Him. Maybe I didn't want to know that I was in debt beyond anything I could ever even try to begin paying back, or maybe it was because I just felt more comfortable being in lazy ignorance of what usually brings me to unending heaving sobs. Maybe I just didn't want to be presumptuous by ignoring the truth?! I mean, the reasons are clearly all defying the very grace that God extends...whether it's thinking I have to pay him back by trying harder to be "righteous" or thinking that entering into truth would be more cumbersome than freeing and peaceful (I have never once cried and felt burdened because of it), or that somehow I had take a step back lest I steal any of God's glory....that is presumptuous! I mean, the more real observation would be that I'm just so twisted that I would walk into the eternal hole of hell because I just don't know any better. I'm that twisted. I'm that dangerously twisted. My sins, they have me twisted in the head that I would walk right into hell of my accord! Knowing that Christ had paid the way I would have the audacity and the insanity to brush that out, and for what? Because I might cry? Because I'd rather take a nap or be sad and numb? That. Is. Twisted. Everyday I think that I believe in Jesus and that He is my King, yet when something happens that irks me I throw His kingship out and start becoming twisted by walking toward hell instead of accepting His grace. Oh wretched I am! So many minutes in my head are spent being twisted about the beautiful gospel I know is true if only I would believe it by taking the time to dwell on it, even if it means I end up in a waterfall of tears. It's twisted that I live like this.
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
(Romans 7:24-25 ESV)
Thanks be to God.
I can breathe deeply again.
I'm given life again.
And again.
And again.
Everyday I'm given life anew because despite my wretched and twisted behavior and mind, Jesus finished it. He finished my salvation. He saw the droves of people in their twisted minds choosing hell because sin always chooses hell by being sin, and He came to give new life for anyone who would stop and believe that He was God who could do such a thing! I may not always want to think about my freedom in Christ, but Christ must not have died for nothing, otherwise I crucify Him again! No. I repent for letting my twisted head reject His great sacrifice. I recognize that it is His grace that I'm given another day to repent and believe in Him. It is by His grace alone that though I am wretched and twisted, He changes me with His grace into someone who chooses to lose it all and cry like a fountain! He makes me hate the things that don't glorify Him! He makes me love to know the Father! Could I have become like this on my own? There's just no way, I was twisted and He changed me.
As I prayed I heard God ask me "who do you, Jamie, think I Am?"
I said "You Are the King."
And He said, "and what does that make you?"
And before I could respond He said, "my princess."
To which I immediately thought was heresy because it didn't sound biblical. It sounded fluffy and girly. But as I forced myself to think about it, I considered what that meant. To be His princess. This wasn't the image of puffed sleeves and tight curls, rather what came to picture was a wanderer, a type of Pocahontas, if you will. It would mean He was King and I was His Child regardless of what the externals or internals looked or felt. That's what a princess is--a daughter or female child. Perhaps we won't have genders in heaven (I don't know!) but on earth I'm still a female. This meant that if I am His child the moment I choose to believe in His Son, then it is the very same moment that I go from being Jamie, daughter of James and Julie, to Princess Jamie, daughter of the King of all other kings. This fact does not mean I'm suddenly wearing silk dresses and eating frosted pink cakes (though that doesn't always sound so far off of a plan of mine), it is not that kind of word association. Those are just cliches and symbols that humans have created over time. The association with God runs truer than all that. It is entirely relational.
I am the daughter of the King.
What does that mean?
Princess Jamie.
What does that say about my worth?
What does that say about my future?
What does that say about my privileges?
My duties?
My role?
What sort of things come with that title?
Fame? Wealth? Glory?
Definitely. When the time comes for all God's children to take hold of the riches stored in heaven it will, as the bible says, be fullness of all those things--enough to make the richest person on earth look like a haggard beggar. You might be wealthy on earth, and that could be from God but it is for the purpose of giving Him glory for the truer and wealthier riches in His Kingdom.
But what about right now? Does the title come with things right now?
Yes. Relationally.
For example:
If I go abroad and I call my family I always know they miss me or love me or are praying for me. I hardly ever feel that I will wear out my welcome with them. How much more am I loved and accepted by the King, my true father?
Yet how many times have I let the lies that I am not loved by Him seep in? I have forgotten His identity and my own.
I have forgotten What had to be done for such a privilege. Someone had to die--I was headed toward death, and Jesus stopped me and took my place so that I would become the King's daughter.
Don't forget who God is and who that makes you. Praise be to God! I was blindly twisting my way towards hell and He took my death in order that I be crowned on earth as the King's girl.
I may look like a desert wanderer on the outside, I may even look as if nothing has changed (or that things have worsened!) waiting to be revealed when Christ comes again, but I know one thing is highly in full effect: The King I call Father with all the honors that come with that relationship. No longer wretched in the true sense that matters. I live to glorify God because that's my King and my Father by relation.
It sounds kind of silly. But it's true. A part of me wants to delete all of this and be able to present it in a much more earthy and cool way, but nothing beats being the daughter of God--unless you still don't believe it.
Jmegrey
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