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Jesus Is for You
Excerpt taken from Broken Still Chosen: Finding Hope in Jesus When You Feel Unloved, Unseen, or Forgotten by Rob Roozeboom
Chapter 8
Jesus Is for You
I’d love to tell you that when you put your faith and trust in Jesus, all the pain and disappointment that life hits you with go away, but that isn’t the way it works. Even as I write this, I’ve been wrestling with feeling unloved, unseen, and forgotten. Again. And I find myself asking that nagging question: Why, God? Again.
Well, the Bible answers that question right up front in Genesis. When Adam and Eve made the choice to listen to the devil and eat the fruit, sin entered the world. That changed everything. What was once perfect became flawed and broken. Then God showed His love for humanity by sending His only Son, Jesus, to make a way for us to be restored. And yes, there is hope for each one of us through His sacrifice on the cross. That is true. But there is still heartache and brokenness in this world. Big time. We find ourselves living in the tension of knowing there is hope and a better tomorrow on the horizon while living in the here and now that is burdened by brokenness and grief.
Since I broke my foot, I’ve had even more limited accessibility. I can no longer walk, even with my wife’s assistance. Before I broke my foot, she could lift me out of bed or out of a chair, and then I could move around the room by myself. I could finish getting ready standing up on my own. Now she needs to lift me out of bed into the wheelchair, out of the wheelchair onto the shower chair, out of the shower back into the wheelchair, onto the toilet to get dressed, then back into the wheelchair. What used to be one to two lifts has become five to six lifts. I know the toll it’s taking on her back. And at that unpleasant thought, the reality of the disease punches me in the face. Again.
I’m going to make a confession. For many years I’ve battled a recurring bad attitude about God. The way I have seen it is this: my body’s progression with the disease equals my lack of seeing God as good. It feels like a good God would take away the pain, the adversity, the obstacles of being me. A good God wouldn’t let one of His loved ones be condemned as that guy, less than, or worthless. Yet here I am watching my body do exactly what I hoped it would never do—get worse.
And then I remember all of the times God has met my needs, all the times I have experienced His love, all the times He has lifted me out of the dumps, and I feel His attention, presence, and reassuring love once again.
Take an Inventory of God’s Faithfulness
Life seems to happen in waves. Like when you go into your local coffee shop to find yourself the lucky first person in line, only to look back a moment later to see a bunch of people waiting behind you. “Glad we got here when we did,” right? Life itself ebbs and flows in almost every aspect. Peaceful seasons can last for a few days or weeks or even years, then turn on a dime when things get hard again.
When life becomes difficult, and it will, the love of Jesus can be hard to feel. We don’t always feel His warm hug when we’ve been hit by a cold slap in the face—the slap of disappointment, tragic news, conflict in a close relationship, or life’s problems in general. It is natural to feel abandoned when our feelings overshadow the truth. Taking an inventory of God’s faithfulness in the good times will give you a lifeline when you need it. When we pause to recount all the times God has been faithful, it helps us in those hard times to expect Him to come through again.
For a long time, somewhere deep within me, I believed that you could only feel the love of God if you could check off everything on His list—basically by living right and not sinning. But that’s simply not possible. If it were, Jesus would’ve never needed to go to the cross. If we could straighten up and fly right on our own, we wouldn’t need a Savior. How did we ever end up with this lie of an equation that our actions determine whether God loves us? The Bible tells us the opposite. Paul writes,
But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son.
Romans 5:8–10
Jesus died for us while we were still sinners and enemies, not living right, that’s for sure.
That verse is the complete opposite of what our minds so often tell us: If life is hard again, then we’re being punished for some reason. That’s why we can’t feel His love. More than once I’ve let myself get sucked into the idea that my screw-up this time must have been the last straw for God, as if His patience has some breaking point. Although God has been faithful many times before, it is still possible for my mind to take me to, “What if He doesn’t come through this time because I was being so stupid?” I hope I’m not the only one who’s ever thought that.
I had a friend tell me once, “It hurts my heart that you talk to yourself the way you do. You would never talk to someone else struggling that way. You would share with them how much God loves them and how nothing can separate them from His love.” And she was right. I do believe God would never leave you nor forsake you! It’s me I’m not so sure about.
This is a common point of view for many of us, I’ve come to realize. We mistakenly think God will do for others what He’s not willing to do for us. We struggle to believe He loves us as much as He loves the fella who does life with God better than we do. The Enemy can really work on us when we’re in this mistaken place, when we think we must be doing something wrong, or not doing something good enough. We start to doubt and question things we already know the answer to.
And we find ourselves on the merry-go-round of a works relationship with Almighty God, spinning in circles, missing the mercy of God by trying, not trusting. Do you ever find yourself there? It’s time for us to get off that senseless ride. Let’s put on the brakes and stop on the line of truth. There is nothing we need to do, nothing we can do, to earn God’s love. We have been made right through the humble sacrifice of Jesus. That needs to be the number one item on our inventory list: Jesus died for you. And the second item: Jesus is for you. Always. That means He wants what’s best for you, and no way will He ever leave you hanging out to dry.
When the hard times come, what will we remember? We can take a lesson from the Israelites after God parted the Jordan River for them to carry the ark of the covenant across (see Joshua 3). This was after He’d already swallowed up Pharoah’s army in the Red Sea (see Exodus 14). Wandering through the wilderness for decades, eating the same food and seemingly getting nowhere, the dusty followers had plenty of hard times to knock them off course and turn away from God, even after all He had already done to set them free. That’s why God told Joshua to instruct the people to pick up stones from the river and stack them into a monument as a reminder of what He had done. These “stones of remembrance” represented the hardships of their long trip as well as the Lord’s deliverance, a tangible pile to help them remember God’s goodness for generations.
Then Joshua said to the Israelites, “In the future your children will ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you can tell them, ‘This is where the Israelites crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the river right before your eyes, and he kept it dry until you were all across, just as he did at the Red Sea when he dried it up until we had all crossed over. He did this so all the nations of the earth might know that the Lord’s hand is powerful, and so you might fear the Lord your God forever.”
Joshua 4:21–24
This is such a practical way to remind ourselves of God’s faithfulness so we don’t forget in the thick of the hard times.
What would your stones of remembrance look like? I am reminded of mine often as I take inventory. Even my wife will remind me. “Rob, remember when God was faithful when I was on maternity leave, and we only had your income from RISE, and that wasn’t even coming in every month, yet we made it through?” Or a good friend will say, “Remember when God parted the storms and allowed RiseFest to go on? The bad weather hit two miles away, but the grounds for the festival were dry.” Or the time He provided a new personal assistant even though it looked like the road was at a dead end, and the time He prompted a donor to give a generous gift just when we needed it. And remember the time when . . . ? On and on the list goes. I need to pick up more stones the next time I’m at the river. How about you?
…
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Rob Roozeboom
Rob Roozeboom is founder and president of RISE Ministries, Inc. and RiseFest, a large Christian music festival held annually in northwest Iowa. Rob is a sought-after speaker, sharing the stage with Jeremy Camp, TobyMac, MercyMe, and more. He is also the recipient of numerous humanitarian awards. He and his family live in Sheldon, Iowa.
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