Desperate for Him

It is a challenge to truly understand my need for Jesus when I can go through most of my days seemingly not needing Jesus. My husband has a good job, we have a nice house in a safe place, food whenever we want it, insurance that allows me to take my kids to the doctor whenever I need to, the freedom to worship God when and where I want to, and the ability to buy myself all of what I need and much of what I want. I recognize that these things are given to me by God....that all good things come from Him, but that truth lives mostly in my head and too often not in my heart. It is possible for me to go for months on end and easily not find myself in a single moment where I feel a desperate need for God. 

But, the truth is that I DESPERATELY need Him.  This life is a vapor. An instant and it is gone.  I let it sink in that the wages I have earned during these nearly 45 years of life are eternal death and that I CANNOT help myself. I cannot cover, cleanse, or fix the stains of sin that cling to me.  Instead I add to them daily. I cannot do enough good to outweigh the bad. I am utterly helpless and I am utterly doomed.  I am desperate for a savior. It is my ONLY hope. 

Against this awareness of my true state Easter is a life raft in the middle of the ocean. A drowning man doesn't casually swim to the raft and thank it for showing up (even though he would have been fine either way). No. A man who is truly drowning CLINGS frantically because he knows that it is his only means of salvation. And he is grateful. Utterly grateful. He will tell the story over and over about how without that raft he would have drowned. 

How much more should I cling to Christ? That He would endure the brutality of the cross for MY sin. How much more should I tell the tale of how He took what I so surely earned upon Himself so that I could could escape the punishment that I so richly deserved? Oh the love and gratitude that wells up within me....that is filling me daily with courage to lay down my life for Him in return. All of it. My house. My stuff. My lifestyle. My future. To love Him with the utter abandon with which He loves me. What more could He have given? What more do I need to give?