He Wants it All

For most of my life, I’d felt weird hearing the phrase “a personal relationship with Jesus.” The phrase seemed too emotional, too sappy. After all, Jesus is God. He’s the King of the Universe and the Just Judge. We need to respect him for his omnipotence, right? We need to honor his as the highest priority in our lives, right? Yes and yes. So that’s what I tried to do: follow the Commandments in a simple obedience, knowing fully well I was terribly small in comparison to God’s grandeur. I praised him for his goodness and all of the blessings I’d received, but I think deep down there was a fear that terrified me. It wasn’t a holy awe of God, but I worry that I wasn’t doing things right, a worry that I would never pay back all that Jesus did for me. Gosh, I realized, if this was how Luther felt, no wonder he left Catholicism.

I wasn’t about to make the same mistake he did though. My fear didn’t lead me into Marcionism either. Marcionism was an ancient heresy that taught that the God of the Old Testament was a vengeful dictator, while Jesus was a benevolent lover. Marcionism tried to split the Trinity, but I knew that was impossible. Instead, my fear distorted my relationship with the Lord. To me, he wasn’t my Savior, he was my boss. If I didn’t perform, I’d burn, simple as that. My prayer was greatly affected too. I would only praise the Lord, because I was too scared to be honest with him. He was the Lord, I couldn’t bring him my pain, my pain was beneath him, too insignificant to him to be concerned over.

In short, I was too inside my own head. It was only after I began some imaginative meditation with the Gospels that things began to change. I imagine myself being a recipient of one of Jesus's healings. I saw the way he looked at me, a look of love, and it was like we were finally giving each other permission to allow ourselves in. Grace poured into me, and I realized that he wanted all of me, not just part of me. He wanted my good days and my bad days. He wanted my joy and my sorrow too. He didn't come to redeem only the parts of me that were socially acceptable, he redeemed me fully and completely, my whole person.

If you find yourself struggling like I was, my advice to you would be to let Jesus in. The Bible says over and over again “do not be afraid.” The best relationship you can have with him is an honest one. There's so much that he wants to give us, but sometimes we prohibit ourselves from receiving it due to our own feelings of unworthiness. We are unworthy, it's true, but Jesus still wants to heal us. He wants a relationship with the whole of you, not just part of you. I hope and pray you will let him into the parts of you that you're ashamed of. I hope that you will allow him to give you life. That is, after all what he promises: life to the full.