Beloved

More and more I’m being convinced that the one thing that God wants me to grasp in this season that will change everything about the way that I live my life is this simple fact:

I am God’s beloved son.

In fact, it might just be the one thing that we all need to grasp, period, and it’s at the heart of the Gospel.

I’ve long said that the Gospel changes everything. Jesus is a game changer. And this is true on so many different levels. But let me take it one step further as pertains to what I’ve experienced in my own life recently.

Being convinced of God’s love for me changes everything, or at least it can and it will if I let it saturate my heart.

I never really thought about it until recently, but Jesus himself in his own life and ministry was completely dependent upon the Father’s overflowing love and it was that love that undoubtedly sustained Him and allowed Him to love so freely and without growing weary. Yes, Jesus is God and it’s his nature to love and to give, but He is also fully man, capable of burnout and tempted by all the same things that we are that compromise our ability to love unconditionally and without hidden agendas.

It’s no coincidence that early in Jesus’ ministry is a watershed event that changes the course of history and frees him up to carry out what He was sent to do.

In Matthew 3, Jesus is baptized, and as He comes up out of the water, He hears the Father say:

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

It’s this same Spirit that sustains Jesus as He is tempted in the desert. He doesn’t need to do pointless miracles to validate himself. He doesn’t need to do something extravagant to get people to notice and love him. And he certainly doesn’t need the power that would come from bowing down to Satan.

Speaking of Jesus’ temptation, Henri Nouwen says it best:

“Jesus is very clear in his response [to Satan]: ‘I don’t have to prove that I am worthy of love. I am the Beloved of God, the One on whom God’s favor rests.’”

Jesus knows who he is and he knows whose he is, and it’s this identity that is his driving force and which allows him to give himself fully to the needs, the hurt, and the lives of others without his own selfish ambitions getting in the way.

In the same book by Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, but a slightly different thought, he speaks about the idea of “downward mobility,” that is, the move toward people in the margins - the poor, the sick, the elderly, the hurting, the homeless, the depressed, the hopeless - and away from what is typical in our society - wealth, power, and prestige.

As I was thinking about these two ideas, and I think Nouwen would whole-heartedly agree, I came to the conclusion that placing our identity and our worth in being a beloved child of God is absolutely essential to entering into this concept of downward mobility. Then and only then am I able to enter into these relationships and offer compassion to the needy and marginalized with a pure and full heart. Without it I’m simply offering pity, my unwanted “help,” or even using the people I’m trying to serve in an effort to find my own personal satisfaction and to validate myself as a human being. In this way, I’m really after all the same things as everyone else who’s reaching for the top, but I’m probably also filled with pride because of how “noble” a cause I’m pursuing.

The opposite is a relationship that seeks not affirmation, love, or significance, because our needs are already met by the One who loves us in a way that far surpasses all others. It’s a relationship that’s on a level playing field now that we don’t have to prove or produce anything. It’s a relationship that has the other at the center since we’re no longer secretly trying to build ourselves up. And it’s a relationship that enters into others’ pain, poverty, loneliness, and brokenness, being able to admit that we’re not really all that different. -CK

*Starting Monday, I will take a week to explore the idea of “brokenness,” gleaning wisdom from the people with developmental disabilities I work with and the TV show, House.