My Job Description=Sinner; His Job Description=Savior

Dear Jesus - We present before You Your promise that if we seek for You, You will be found by us.  We plead that the beauty of Your gift to us will be real supernaturally to us in a way that changes us today.

I will never leave you or forsake you.  For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.  For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.  (Hebrews 4:9, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, Romans 10:13, 1Peter 3:18 NASB)

Yesterday several circumstances came together to urge me on a hunt for these verses.  Here's what I find so beautiful just through the literal reading: 

• I matter to God.  He doesn't leave me to wallow alone in this sin-saturated world.
• I'm a sinner.  Maybe I'm not sitting in prison for a crime but the seemingly smaller moral failures like anger, lying, cheating, selfishness, idolatry I can relate to.  More than that - as David says in Psalms, some days my sins are EVER before me.
• Knowing I'm a sinner doesn't scare Jesus.  He knows my reality better than me!  He reminds me in His WORD that I was born in sin. 
• I've earned death.  I'm so successful at my job of sinner that I have worked my way to my reward:  DEATH.
• Do I want something else?  Have you seen the news?  Daily living here ain't 24hrs of a spa-like existence.  The sins that bug me the most - yeah I'd like complete deliverance from those.
• Do I want eternal life?  Hey - I'm looking at death plus a fairly stress-filled life right now.  I'll take something else.  Eternal life - are you kidding?  Haven't you heard about Heaven?  In our house we call it 'Jesus' exciting place'... 
• Jesus offers me eternal life.  Now just how cool is that?  So how do I earn that?  Uh - nope.  I don't earn it.  And the amazing thing is this - Jesus does it all.  He says in Laura's version of this verse - Come to me Laura - I will give you rest NOW in the midst of the craziness.  Just come hang out with me.  The closer we get - the more of your sin will be burned up by the fire of the love I have for you.
• Even better - Jesus draws me to Himself - the source of all healing!  It gets better... 
• I can only love Jesus BECAUSE He first loved me!  He does it all!  How many times can I say that?  Guess we'll find out.  Because that is the amazing thing about Jesus.  He does it all.

Now seriously - how can I not want to do THAT?  Hang out with Jesus?  Are you kidding me?  I have tasted and it is GOOD. 

The hubs told me last summer as I railed explained to him my stresses:  Honey - Seek ye first the kingdom of God and everything else will be added to you.  Good wife that I am - I said:  'Sweets uh, yeah ok, but I have a work to do.  I have to...'   And in my head I said 'and please don't quote scripture to me!'  Didn't believe him.  The Bible couldn't be that relevant to me.  I cannot tell you the number of times we repeated this conversation.  Here I am - like 6 months later saying Husband - you were right and I was wrong!  (It's a rule we have in our house...gotta admit it loud and proud when the other spouse is right)  And how happy I am to do that...  The WORD is good and it IS the way, the truth and the life... :-)