Broken Crutches

I recently had the privilege to embark on a week long trip to Delhi, India.  Now that I am back state side I wake up with new thoughts overflowing from this trip and all the work God is doing there and here inside of my heart.  One of the convicting things bubbling up to the surface in this vast ocean of thoughts is...would I still know that God loved me if I didn't have anything at all.  I can tangibly look around at the things I have and for some reason, maybe this is just me, but I start to relate them to the infinite love of Jesus.  Now sure he gives us things and people and those things are good in and of themselves.  For me though, if I am honest with myself,  I use those things like a crutch everyday.  I don't use the powerful and gracious work of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to hold me up often enough.  In both the death and resurrection I should have everything I need.  All the authority of my Lord who conquered death and the inheritance of the kingdom of God through his beautifully necessary death.  Here is an example.  Now as you read this it might sound really crazy, and it probably is, but think on it for a second.  I would lose my whole mind if I lost my phone.  I almost lose my mind when I leave it at home on accident.  I use that thing everyday for work or for communicating with my friends and my family.  The phone helps me with the things I think I need everyday.  An alarm, a photo, even downtime with a game or two.  Now it doesn't have to be a phone for you.  It can be anything or anyone, but while I was in India I met a woman who only had a roof, a bed, the clothes she was wearing on her back and her family.  She was didn't even have her sight.  Much less a phone.  But when you talked with her you knew she had something more valuable than anything that this world could give or take away.  She had the hope of the world. She knew the saving power of our high priest.  She smiled when she talked about Him and cried tears of joy when she spoke of how he took her life and saved her. Have I muddled those truths down in my life with all my stuff?   My point in saying all of this is that I am praying that I will, every single day until I die, look to the death and resurrection.  That womans faith was like a match to spark this truth that I had somehow hidden away in my heart.  There is nothing and I literally mean nothing in this world that I want to be more valuable to me than Jesus.  He is my only hope, my only true comfort, and the only thing that will sustain me.  I am blessed to have really awesome people in my life and have some nice things that I call my own.  But for me, when those things are a measure of the depth of Gods' love being displayed in my life, I have strayed so far off the path.  I pray that he would take everything away from me so that my vision would be focused on Him and Him alone.  As hard as the trip to India was for me in numerous ways, I thank God because he has showed me that if I had nothing at all, no phone, car, family, friends, home, that I would indeed have everything, because I am his child and he will never forsake me.  That truth I believe has nothing to do with material things. The depth of his love was shown on the cross when he became sin and in the resurrection when he displayed his authority by conquering death. I not only want to speak of those truths, but I want to live those truths out everyday so that everyone, including me, will see the depths of our fathers love for us and he will get all of the glory.