Jesus Knows and Loves Me Best

 

When I read, 

You have kept count of my tossings;
     put my tears in Your bottle.
     Are they not in Your book?
Then my enemies will turn back
     in the day when I call.
     This I know, that God is for me.
In God, whose word I praise,
     in the LORD, whose word I praise,
in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.
     What can man do to me?

~Psalm 56:8-11, ESV

       and,

I tell you, My friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear Him who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into Hell. Yes, I tell you, fear Him! Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your heard are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.

~Luke 12:4-7, ESV

I can breathe.

I can inhale the truth of my Abba, Father God's Word by the sanctifiying and lifegiving power of His Holy Spirit. And I can exhale every sin and weight that my weak flesh, Satan, and this world uses to dam up the flow of the pure, holy, and righteous life of Christ in me.

As I sit here in weakness and pain, I remember some of the horrors that were wrought upon me that greatly contributed to my present state. And as I remember the evil, desperately lost people thrashed upon me, physically and verbally, I pray for them. Because no matter what they did to me, I still get to enjoy being enveloped in the warmth of my Redeemer's intimate and mighty love and comfort. And they still have to live with the unimaginably guilty conscience that God mighily presses upon all who disobey His holy and good commandments.

I honestly can't fathom what goes through the minds of those who hurt and kill the innocent. And I can't imagine the depth of the darkness they live in. But I know that it's so severely corrupt, perverse, and cavernous that without Christ, they must run from it by using various vices, or even become manic and crazed.

God made every human being in His image. He created us to be able to live reasonably, like Him. And when anyone lives in any manner that's unreasonable to His perfect and beautiful standard, we have to try to escape from it. No one is powerful enough to withstand the brilliance of the light He shines on our conscience. No one is powerful enough to live in harmony with any form of immorality whether in thought or deed.

There was not then, and is not now, a day that passes where I can't trace the glorious details of my Father's wisdom; and the inexplicable security I live in because of God's endless grace and mercy lavished on me.

But those who plot and do evil don't get to live in the freedom and luxury I do. They don't get to rest and live peaceably with their conscience knowing that Jesus knows and loves those who abide in Him. And only He loves us perfectly in spite of ourselves.

The love of God my Father and the life of His Son that lives in and through me as I am sealed and kept safe by His Holy Spirit, makes me to live in a way I, nor anyone else can live without Him—whole and complete.