Redeemed

"Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28).

There are so many people hurting. This is something that God has been showing me lately, as I was working on my poem called Redeemed, based on Matthew 11:28. In this world, we have suffering, pain, and trauma, which most of us end up carrying throughout our whole lives. Sometimes, it feels like we are literally carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders and it’s hard to let go…

A couple of nights ago, I felt the weight of my own pain, as I curled up in a ball on my bed. My heart was so heavy I could not even pray. But, as I lay there on my bed, my pain, which I tried to bury deep, became like a living, breathing thing pulsating throughout my entire body. I never experienced anything like this before but as I fell asleep, I felt it covering me like a blanket. Then, a few hours later I woke up abruptly to a sharp physical pain in my arm and you know what the first thought that came to my head was? - I deserved it. I deserved this pain. The next morning, I did not feel like myself because I felt so far away from God. So, I put on some worship music and started praying and while I did so the scripture Isaiah 53 came to me.

This scripture talks about Jesus and how he took our pain and suffering by going on the cross. The punishment that brought us peace was on him. And, so I heard a voice saying to me “how can you say you deserve pain when he took it from you”? “If you deserve pain then Jesus dying on the cross was for nothing.” The one who did not deserve any of the pain and suffering took it all from me and why? - because of love. We still live in a world where suffering is inevitable BUT because of Jesus we can have peace and overcome. 

I had to check myself and question if I even understood the love of God and how much He loves me… LOVE conquers all sins. The fear and mentality that “I deserved punishment” is not one that has been perfected in love. But, it is one that a lot of us adopted when it comes to God and how religion makes God seem. If we make a mistake then we have to face a wrathful God and this is why a lot of us fall away or have never come to Him in the first place because we feel like God is of punishment and not love. We do not know that God is actually there waiting for us with love, forgiveness, and mercy. Psalm 118, it says that His mercy endureth forever and in many scriptures like Hebrew 8:12 it also says that He does not even remember our sins and no longer holds them against us. Jesus even tells one of His disciples in Matthew 18:22 that we should forgive one another seventy-seven times. This was an example to show His disciple that it did not matter how many times, we should always have a heart of forgiveness, which shows the heart of God. He gives us many chances and to some, it might seem like God is foolish or soft to do so but what we, as humans, fail to understand is that love has a transforming effect. 

For example, in John 8, there is a situation where a bunch of religious leaders brought an adulterous woman to Jesus to see what He would do. They asked Jesus if they should stone the woman to death for her sin, which was a custom of punishment in their culture but He did not reply right away. Condemnation was to be expected but when Jesus did answer, she was met with mercy instead. He challenged the religious leaders and told them that the first without sin should cast the stone, however, none of them could and so they left one by one. Jesus could have done it himself because He was without sin but, instead, He told her to go and sin no more. 

Although there is no follow-up to her story, I am sure this woman did not go back and sin because of the unexpected mercy she received from Jesus, which probably had a lasting effect on the way she lived her life from then on. If we could grasp that love is everything and that it uplifts heavy burdens, cast out fear, transform us into better people, and most importantly saves us, then I am sure we would live our lives differently. We would live in freedom knowing the truth that love DOES conquer all. What Jesus did on the cross is evidence of this truth. We would not be carrying around our heaviness and thinking that we deserve the pain. If we focused more on being like Jesus, sharing love and not judgment then we would impact those around us in a positive way because we would be healed people, set free, and walk in truth and light. 

Lately, I have felt like I have been in a season of heaviness and a chapter of my life where I had to be strong before being happy but a friend of mine challenged me and asked; "why can't you be both at the same time"? She said, "being happy is not as hard as we make it to be, allow happiness to soak into your being." It is true, we cannot base our joy on things around us but it has to come from within and when it does then we will be able to find joy even in the worst situation. So, I have made an intentional decision to enjoy life and be happy.  My focus right now is to release all this pain that has been bottled up inside of me and make space for joy, and just dwell in God's presence because in His presence there is true freedom and fullness of joy.