04. Jesus Paid It All -- Blessed

“I hear the Savior say, ‘Thy strength indeed is small 

Child of weakness watch and pray, find in Me thine all in all.’”

As I sang these words softly, I was feeling a weakness of a sort that I wouldn’t normally think to pair with this hymn. I was upset, emotional, and downright grumpy. The only reason I found myself with time enough to have this study was because something I had been looking forward to for weeks hadn’t happened, due to health complications of someone I hold dear. I felt very much a child of weakness, and so, to sit down with a huff, and open the hymnal to these words … simply put, God had my attention. ‘Weakness’ and ‘fear,’ these words have been coming up everywhere I turn, and each time they do I am told, in more or less words, that God is enough. Because, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear,” (1 John 4:18) “God is love,” (1 John 4:8) and “[His] power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9) And in this hymn He says I must simply watch, pray, and find my all in all in Him. Because He is all I need. Really, when you have a perfect, infinite, all-powerful, loving {and so much more} God, what more could you ever need? What more could you want?

“We are all half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, we are like ignorant children who want to continue to make mud pies in a slum because we cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a vacation by the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”  -C.S. Lewis

The truth of this convicts me to the core. Why do we settle for anything less than Him, when He has offered Himself to us so freely? This, I cannot comprehend. We rush through time spent with Him, because we’re so anxious to get to our activities, and these we shut Him out from! We have this Great God, and we hold things back from Him, saying, “No, this is mine,” when He has not even withheld the life of His very Son from us! And He didn’t even leave it at that, though it would have been enough.

3) How does God bless me? (She strikes again)

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ … In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us … making known to us the mystery of his will … In him we have obtained an inheritance … In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” - Ephesians 1:3-14 (excerpts)

And it doesn’t end there. His blessings go on and on; His mercies never end, and are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23)

“For nothing good have I whereby Thy grace to claim - 

I will wash my garments white in the blood of Calvary’s Lamb. 

Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe 

Sin had left a crimson stain - He washed it white as snow.”

You and I have done nothing to deserve this, and yet still, He gave His own Son, His own blood … He held nothing back from us, because He loved us so radically. How can we spend a moment not in utter awe of this blessed truth?

“And when before the throne, I stand in Him complete, 

‘Jesus died my soul to save,’ my lips shall still repeat.”