Unworthy

FOREVER by Kari Jobe

The moon and stars they wept
The morning sun was dead
The Savior of the world was fallen
His body on the cross
His blood poured out for us
The weight of every curse upon him

One final breath He gave
As Heaven looked away
The Son of God was laid in darkness
A battle in the grave
The war on death was waged
The power of hell forever broken

The ground began to shake
The stone was rolled away
His perfect love could not be overcome
Now death where is your sting
Our resurrected King has rendered you defeated

Forever, He is glorified
Forever, He is lifted high
Forever, He is risen
He is alive
He is alive

I love that song! The words are so beautiful and it reminds me exactly what God did for us on Calvary. Speaking of Calvary, Easter Season is upon us. A time for us to reflect on God’s love for us. A love so great that he would send his only son to die on a cross and bare the world’s sins when he was without sin. A perfect lamb, the supreme sacrifice to make a way to Heaven for all of us who are unworthy of such a gift. A gift that is free.

I read Romans 5:8 yesterday. It reminded me how unworthy I truly am of God’s love.

Romans 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

I like to look up words that I don’t quite know the meaning of. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, commend means: 1. to praise in a serious & often public way; to mention as deserving attention or approval. 2. to entrust for care or preservation 3. to recommend as worthy of 4. to mention with approbation (praise).

To me this verse says God showed us his love by giving his son as a sacrifice for our sins and thought we were worthy of His love even though we were sinners. It makes me feel so unworthy to know that God has a love for us that big!

I read in Lamentations today about mercy. According to Merriam-Webster mercy is 1.kind or forgiving treatment of someone who could be treated harshly. 2. compassion or forbearance shown especially to an offender or one subject to one’s power.

Lamentations 3:22&23 It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

God is also a merciful God! He is merciful when we fail him. He was merciful on us and gave us a way out of our sin. He gave us a way to go to Heaven when he didn’t have to. All we have to do is accept His Son Jesus as our savior, believe that he died for our sins, rose again on the third day, confess our sins and ask for forgiveness of those sins. It is so simple that sometimes it seems unbelievable. How can such a big God give his son for me? I didn’t do anything to deserve it. In fact it is quite the opposite. I’ve done lots of things that didn’t deserve once ounce of mercy. Thank God it is not what I’ve done or didn’t do. It is what God did! What Christ did for us. A willing sacrifice.

I don’t feel that words can describe the gratitude and love I feel for Christ’s ultimate act of love. I’ve been feeling even more unworthy lately. I have slipped in my reading and prayer life and have put God on the back burner. I have stumbled and said things that I’ve regretted. I have not have God’s love for people and I have had an ultimately bad attitude about everything. Basically I have been fighting with my flesh. The ugly side, the side that wants to do what I want and who cares about anything else. I’ve been mad at God for some really stupid reasons! Just dumb. My husband didn’t get his Christmas bonus like we expected and we didn’t get a tax return like we expected either. We  got a check from an excess in our escrow account and it was a mistake. I got a letter saying we needed to send it back. I was mad at God for those things and even questioned why would you let this happen to us? Why? We needed that money! God reminded me yesterday that even though I think I need something that doesn’t mean that I truly do. He will always provide for us. He gives us exactly what we need.

One of our bills was unexpectedly high and it was going to overdraw our account if I paid it. I was just going to pay it with a credit card which I didn’t want to do. I prayed and asked God to please make a way and somehow help us to cover the costs even though I doubted that he would. I called our mortgage company about the letter I received asking to return the funds. I needed to know who to write the check to. After speaking to her she apologized and said there was a computer glitch and it messed a lot of people’s accounts up. She said I’ll make a note that you are going to send the funds back and the amount you need to send back is $XXX.XX. She explained to me that they gave us all the money from our escrow and it zeroed our account out. If I sent the amount she said back it will be enough to cover the shortage in the account.

She told me who to write the check to and made sure I knew to include some things in the check so they would know what to do with it. After I hung up I subtracted the amount that I was returning from the amount of the check we got and low and behold it was just enough for the bill that we got that was unexpectedly high.

I was overwhelmed with God’s love. I felt so undeserving of that after I had been so upset and angry. God will always provide for his children even though we don’t always deserve it.

I thank God for unexpected blessings and for unexpected bills. God is showing me more and more how much I need him. He doesn’t need me, I need him.! I thank God for the cross, for sending his son to die for me so that I could go to Heaven one day. I thank him for providing for me always and for his reminders. I thank God for his mercy, love, grace and understanding.

This week as you think of what the Easter Bunny may bring, don’t forget to reflect on what Easter is truly about and God’s love for us. Even though we were unworthy, God said yes we are worthy. It should have been you and me on that cross. We were the ones deserving of punishment. Christ went to the cross willingly and died for us because of His love for us.

A song I love is “Small as I am” by Nathan & Tonya Horton. It has been on replay on my phone. The words are awesome and describe how I feel.

SMALL AS I AM by Nathan & Tonya Horton

May God bless you this week and may you feel his overwhelming love!

Love from above,

Iva Mae

Here are a few of my favorite songs that go along with this post:

Forever by Kari Jobe https://youtu.be/huFra1mnIVE

Small as I am by Nathan & Tonya Horton Scroll down to Our Testimony CD and the song is #4. You can actually purchase this song and/or the album from this site as well.  http://nathanandtonyahorton.com/store

Alive (from the Story) by Natalie Grant https://youtu.be/3AFpgzjRD44

Not Guilty by Mandisa https://youtu.be/S7fokl9riJ0