What I Want Most for You, All of You

First published on March 11, 2012

I started out 16 years ago on a part-time mission to analyze the Bible and prove that it was false. I believed in God in that creator sense of all things, but that God could get involved in our affairs and that men could understand him was, to me, absurd. The Bible was nonsense to me. I wanted to identify areas where it needed to be replaced. If you read this blog that I started in February 2005, you will quickly realize that something radical happened.

Long story short, my arguments fell one by one. I found this to be a teflon gospel, and the thing that surprised me most was Jesus. There He was in the very Beginnings. In Genesis 3:15 - God's first response to sin was to send His Son Jesus. Did you know that? Throughout Genesis to the end of the Hebrew Bible - the Old Testament - the world is being primed to receive the Messiah. In the New Testament, here He comes. Our Hero.

And, in this slow motion train wreck of the old Jim, God reached out to me and finally tore the veil. He came to me where I was after I had cussed him out for doing such a lousy job of running the universe. How little I knew. But He didn't mind. He was more interested that this lost sheep cried out to Him.

What I want for you - all of you - is to know God as I know Him and, therefore, love Him beyond words. If you already do - if you're reading this and enjoying it as a reminder of your own salvation moment - then God has blessed you already. Amen, brother or sister! If you are still wondering what I'm talking about, read on.

Knowing that Jesus died for your sins, that God has already shed His blood to get your attention and extend to you His salvation, is incomparable. Nothing else in life could possibly equate to this infinite blessing that blows the mind so to guarantee that the deposit of His Holy Spirit will never run out as long as you live. Believing Jesus IS the power of God for salvation, and thus for peace and joy. Endless joy. The night God finally tore the veil for Blaise Pascal to believe in him without reservation, the great philosopher could only write down the shakiest journal entry of his life; "Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy!" That's the best description of my encounter with my living and loving Creator; as clearly as I could describe it myself. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy!

Since that day, November 20, 2001, I have had a peace that I cannot describe. I desperately want you, the reader, to know that peace. I want my daughter to know the peace of God and, to her surprise, find THAT running through her veins when she most expected rage and sorrow to reign. It's really the love of God pumping through your veins, isn't it, brothers and sisters?

Paul prayed it right 1950 years ago when he wrote a special prayer to the Ephesians:

A Prayer for the Ephesians (Ephesians 3)
14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

"To grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ". Thank you, Lord Jesus, for giving me that grasp. Make me a channel for that peace, which is Your eternal treasure.