renegade rescue

elizabeth gentry

 

I sit collapsed in anguish on the floor, heaving heavily, as the last remnants of a tear strike my cheek.  Every time that I experience brokenness in Jesus, I find myself claiming that it is the most brokenhearted that I will ever feel.  I have many days and many moments where I feel as though my pain cannot be further trespassed in any situation.  Yet tonight, I make a liar out of myself again.

 

Defeated, I lay here waiting for a victory.  I call out to God, but there is no answer, because there’s none to be given.  The steady hum of a heater and a chilling rendition of “Break Every Chain” play softly in the background.  Outside of my laden breathing and the shallow percussion, there is silence.

 

All of the sudden, like a wave capsizing a ship, my heart breaks.  It shatters. I shatter. And then there’s silence again.

 

Why does it break? It must be cumulative sum of God’s promise’s combined with the utter transparency of His will.  He has made a covenant with me. Yet I still cower in fear that He will not fulfill His promises.

 

As desperately as I want to be different, as desperately as I want to stand on His works and past miracles in my life, as desperately as I believe that God can do as God says He will do, there is still a lingering fear that suffocates my faith.

 

I pull satan’s hands from my throat as air floods back in.  I can finally breathe.  I inhale steadily. As the oxygen returns, so do my worldly senses telling me that God is a liar.  I’ve seen His works; I’ve seen His miracles; I’ve seen Him move the immovable; but the aggressive anxiety in my heart overshadows the renegade rescue of the cross.

 

As quickly as the air returns, it vanishes.  Satan stifles my cry, suffocating me once again.  The culmination of satan’s works in my life seem to far outnumber God’s.  I live in this notion: resting almost; yet no sleep comes.  Resting in satan and his lies only serves to keep me up.  I glance back to Christ, where He sits warmly, waiting patiently, with arms wide open.

 

 

 

 

“Why is it so hard to trust Him?”

 

 

 

 

Giving myself over to Christ calls for complete abandonment. But alas, this abandonment is one unlike any of the other types that I’ve experienced before.  This abandonment is an abandonment of self for a greater purpose.  Previously, I have been abandoned, and I have abandoned many things, but it was always for myself, never of myself.

 

Jesus asks me to abandon myself— abandon my dreams and my desires, but also He begs me to abandon the fears and despairs and anxieties that cripple me from ever knowing anything good.

 

He asks for abandon so that our hands are empty receive what He may place in them.  He asks for relinquishment because He longs to give us more.  I know this: I’ve seen it and experienced it and lived it, yet I find myself clinging to old promises from the grave and tired faith. 

 

Jesus waits quietly.  Satan whispers loudly.  I stare at the cross.  However deafening the enemy’s cries are, they are still oddly quiet in comparison to the gentle stillness at Christ’s feet.

 

I stand, capturing the attention of them both.  My eyes lock with the one of my enemy in a silent standstill that will determine what path I take.

 

The cross doesn’t make sense.  This life, this persecution, this hurt— it is not logical.  Nothing about my decision to follow Abba is wise by worldly standards.  Why He shed His blood for me: I fathom it almost as little as I deserve it.  I don’t understand.  But at this moment of a war within my gaze, I don’t care.

 

 

 

“Why is it so hard to trust Him?”

 

 

 

 

 

It never has to make sense.  I never have to understand why God does what He does.  I never have to comprehend why or how He will do something.  I am called to trust.

 

I never have to make sense of what is truly nonsensical.  What God did… what He continues to do… I am the traitor; I am the apostate. Jesus choosing me?  It goes against the standard.  He is the renegade: he is the reckless and irresponsible man who abandoned everything just to love me.

 

So as I walk toward my Victor, the same one who was a victor that day on the cross 2,000 years ago, I relinquish myself.

 

I will trust in Him.  I will trust in the unseen and the things unknown.  I will trust that what He says will come to pass.  I don’t understand why God would have sacrificed His Son so I could be here at this moment, but I don’t ever have to.

 

I will trust because He chose me.  I will trust because He trusted that I was worth it.

 

What He did was preposterous— so many watched in awe of his audacious choices.  I see them as wild, yet somehow, they are wildly necessary.

 

Now, I am finding rest in the fact that Jesus did what should have never been done.  Now, I find rest in knowing that I didn’t deserve the cross, but Jesus fulfilled it anyway.  Jesus, the man who pursued me recklessly, audaciously… daringly— He is my renegade rescue.

 

I am chosen by Him, and now, I choose Him in return.