Nine Times to Hear

Nancy O'Meara   -  

“For the Lord, your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With His love, He will calm all your  fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.” Zephaniah 3:17

Our Lord  is our mighty Savior. He encourages us in Ephesians 2:8-9 to remember that, “For it is by grace, that you have been saved, through faith and this is not from yourself, it is a gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.”

It took me nine times hearing this message to accept that Jesus is my mighty Savior, delighting in me and rejoicing over my acceptance of His gift of salvation.  It was extremely hard for me to understand there was nothing the I could do to earn this grace. I only needed to trust Him for the forgiveness and love I was desperately seeking in my life. For many years I had been looking for love in all the wrong places. In Jesus’s love I found the freedom to live a life of abundance and grace.

Why is it so hard then that I still tend to struggle with being performance driven when my Savior has already provided  all that I need? I believe it began in my childhood. My Dad had an incredible work ethic that eventually affected his health which led to an early death. His example of being performance driven was instilled in me at an early age. I confused performance results with trying to do my best in any given situations. These are two different concepts. Trying to earn love was such a struggle for me.

Has anyone else has ever fought the battle?

After asking this question,  I found many are still in the midst of the fight. Grasping that Jesus’s love for us is not based on anything I can do took time for me. Sometimes even now, in my humanness, under pressure, I can fall back into my old ways.

Has this  ever happened to you?

One thing I do know is that Jesus knew we would struggle which is why it can not be about us. Our feelings can change with the wind, but our Savior is never changes. “Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8

Our relationship with Jesus is a gift from our God who  radically loves us and “rejoices over us with joyful songs.” (See Zephaniah 3:17) We too can rejoice in this!

The comfort of knowing this allows us to journey through life with our Savior who is not judging our performance but encouraging us and loving us. We can rest in Him when were are exhausted and need comfort.

We can learn from Him when we need wisdom. When we are wrong we are forgiven through repentance which is turning from our sins. We can communicate directly with Jesus and share our prayers and our concerns. He hears us and He answers us.

NOM