My life has been filled with sorrow, loss, and pain, and therefore I’ve always felt great earnestness about why I exist and what might be the reason for my life. Perhaps because pain and trouble have haunted my days, the matter of salvation for me has always been deeply existential. I did not hunger for healing to find solace over the various disappointments that commonly attend our lives; for me the question was a matter of life and death. I felt like was suffocating and dying inside every day. “Find God or die.”
I was abandoned as a child, and that wound – delivered before I knew “my left hand from my right” – made me an exile and an orphan who had difficultly trusting others. When you are shattered of heart at a young age, it is hard to believe that others will be there for you. Inner pain makes you feel lonely, different, strange…. You always feel like your an outsider, a voyeur who stands alone, lost within your aching heart… Fear shadows your way and there is no place of rest for your soul. I tried various ways to kill the pain, but none worked; I always returned to the brooding questions of whether life was worth living, and whether there was any purpose for my pain-riddled existence.
I began to find healing when my heart was awakened to believe the message of the gospel. Not that I was instantly made whole, mind you, as the pain of my inner fear often tempted me to understand God’s promises as being for “other people” and not for me. The message was so glorious, so wonderful — too good to be true — and that is why it was hard for me to let go of my fear… The thought of a “happy home,” being surrounded by love, having a “place at the table,” etc., had long been a torment for me, something for other people, and “heaven” therefore seemed like a dream of my childlike heart — and for that very reason something for which I dared not open my heart to hope. And yet God is very patient and repeatedly called to me to come to him. He invited me to give voice to my pain, my fear, and my troubles; he listened to me in my worst moments, not as my Judge but as my Healer and my Friend.
Regarding the question of faith, Kierkegaard once wrote, “The easiness of Christianity is distinguished by one thing only: by the difficulty. Thus the Master’s yoke it easy and its burden light — for the person who has cast off all his burdens, all of them, the burdens of hope and of fear and of despondency and of despair — yet it is difficult.” I think I understand this. The difficult thing, yea, the nigh impossible thing, is to truly let go, to surrender to God’s love, and to believe (Mark 9:24). You have to deny yourself by forgetting your past; you have to be willing to “give up your sickness” of heart. Sins are like great possessions that are difficult to give up. Among other things, we must forgive (“give away”) our sins (both our own and those against us), and that means trusting God enough to bear our wounds for us. Forgiveness allows us to move on with our lives by letting go of the pain of the past (2 Cor. 5:16). The atonement cost God everything, and yet is of no spiritual value until it is accepted into the heart. It seems “easy” to understand this, but it is difficult to live it. We die every day to what our fear says is real; we come alive when we trust in God’s presence and care for our lives.
Love requires trust, “taking to the heart.” We are to “know this day and turn to your heart (והֲשֵׁבתָ אֶל־לְבָבֶךָ) that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other” (Deut. 4:39). We need to know truth (cognitive) and to be moved by the heart (emotional); we need both Spirit and Truth (John 4:24). “For all things come from You (כִּי־מִמְּךָ הַכּל), and from your hand we give to you” (1 Chron. 29:14). Teshuvah centers on Yeshua our Savior: turn to believe in Him!