July 2020 Articles

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Spiritual Corner: Give Me Jesus

Spiritual Corner: Give Me Jesus As most of you all know, I am a new mother. My son, Rebel, will be 5 months old on June 29th. He has been the absolute greatest blessing to my husband, Randy, and I. I can’t imagine life without him now, nor would I want to return to life without him. His existence has impacted me in so many ways. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the purity and innocence of my sweet boy. Rebel is untainted by the craziness and evil of the world right now. He doesn’t know about or understand bad that happens. He lives in the present and lives joyfully. He is always laughing and smiling. His smiles and laughs bring me such joy. It’s crazy to me that he will smile so big at the smallest thing. I make a tiny noise and his whole face lights up. I start to sing a song and a smile spreads across his face. Randy tickles him and talks funny and he breaks out into precious laughter. He is so joyful and so joyful over the simple things. I think about myself and my own life and it saddens me to realize that I don’t experience that same exuberant joy over all of the little things like Rebel does. I, unlike my son, have been tainted by the world and the world’s sin. I constantly deal with the stresses and worries that this life brings. I worry about the sickness that surrounds us. I am weighed down by the violence and the hate that envelopes our society. I hear and see the petty posts and remarks and witness bickering and verbal altercations every day that I walk on this earth. I am burdened by the suffering and pain that my loved ones and even strangers go through. I am far from pure and innocent. I get angry, I act selfish, I gossip, I judge, I stumble, I fall. Then I interact with Rebel and I am refreshed again by his purity and joy. Yet, I worry and pray that I will not smother his optimistic outlook on life by dragging my worldly baggage into his life. In times like these, when I realize the sin and the evil and the bad that surrounds my life and inevitably, everyone else’s lives, I think about Jesus. I think about Jesus and I am eternally thankful. I’m thankful for Him and the sacrifice He made for each of us so that we do not have to be a prisoner to our sin and the evil of this world. Jesus is able to restore us, redeem us, and return that exuberant joy to each of us. It’s something that has to happen continually, as we get bombarded with more pain and heartache, but thankfully, Jesus freely gives this gift to us as long as we obey the Gospel, and continue to repent and seek Him. There is truly so much craziness and evil going on in the world today. And to me, the worst part is, it’s all causing so much divisiveness. We need to all turn back to Jesus. We need more Jesus. But we don’t need to just attend worship services and read our Bible and pray for people. We also need to deeply reflect on ourselves and our thoughts and actions. We need to do this daily. We need to allow ourselves to be broken at the foot of the cross and allow God to convict us and show us how we can be better. I feel like we so often get caught up in living our lives by simply going through the motions. We are comfortable with our lives and we enjoy our lives and our family and our God. However, I’ve recently been convicted on this fact. It’s not enough for us to love God and learn more about Him, if we don’t share His love with others. We need to actively live out the Truth and God’s love. It’s not always going to be comfortable. In fact, I feel like if we’re not doing something that pushes us outside our comfort zone or causes us to sacrifice things we want to do in exchange for doing for others, than we probably need to reflect some more because our faith may have gotten stagnant. I’m starting to realize this more and more about myself. God expects us to live out His love. We don’t want to be face to face with God on judgement day and Him be disappointed in us, do we? I know I sure don’t. I believe it starts with us reflecting and repenting and seeking God more and then actively loving others. We must die to self. We have to stop worrying about ourselves. We have to stop making excuses for ourselves. We have work to do for the Kingdom of God. There is a song that we have played for Rebel since he was about a month old I guess. We play it for him when it’s time for him to go to sleep or to calm him. It helps to soothe him, calm him down, and often will help him to fall to sleep. It’s called “Give Me Jesus” by Jeremy Camp. I can’t help but think about the purity and joyfulness of my sweet son and how he is soothed and comforted to the point of sleep by a lullaby that whispers the words “Give Me Jesus”. I pray that Rebel will continue to grow with love for this song and will continue to find deep peace and rest from its’ words that will soon transcend to deep peace and rest from truly knowing the Jesus that the song sings about.
I encourage you to listen to this song. Really listen to it and meditate on it. We need this. We need Jesus and then we need to figure out how to give Jesus to this world. Remember that giving implies that it’s a gift. We have to make sure we aren’t forcing Jesus on others, but GIVING Him to others, through the way we act and speak and behave. If we truly want to be “given Jesus”, then we must remember the sacrifice of ourselves that we must make and be ready to serve Him in the way that He would have us to. Take time to get in God’s Word today and to reflect on yourself. Don’t be afraid to step outside what’s comfortable and go against the grain (speaking to myself here!) and give Jesus to others—even when they don’t deserve it (reality check—none of us do!), and even when the world, sometimes even your friends/family and other Christians, don’t agree or understand. I pray that you’ll allow yourself to fully receive Jesus, not just through salvation, but in every daily moment, and that you’ll then take everything He’s given you and you’ll give Jesus to others. If we all begin to do this, I think we may just have a chance at reaching the joy and peace that Rebel has when he hears those words…”Give Me Jesus…”. --Dana Alexander
“Then he said to them all: ‘Whoever wants to by my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me’”. –Luke 9:23
“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self”? –Luke 9:24-25
“He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less”. –John 3:30
“No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other”. –Luke 16:13
“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple”. –Luke 14:26-27
“And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last”. –Luke 13:30