Be the Gift: Jesus Believes in You

Editor’s Note: Ann Voskamp, in One Thousand Gifts encouraged readers to live a life of thanksgiving and to chronicle the gifts from God in their everyday lives. In The Broken Way, she reminded us that freedom is not found beyond fear and pain, but within it. Now, in Be the Gift, she unpacks and chronicles the next step to really live in communion — opening ourselves up to givenness in spite of our brokenness.

*

We in our brokenness believe in God — and God believes in us through our brokenness. Because we’ve asked Christ to take our brokenness and give us His righteousness.

Can I believe in God, in Jesus, in a way that I know Jesus believes in me — because I know that Christ Himself gave Himself for me, died for me, dwells deeply within me? Maybe it isn’t enough to believe in Jesus — maybe I have to believe that Jesus believes enough in me to choose me — because He’s made me, loves me, died for me, is in me. If Christ has chosen me, If He’s the only One who has ever loved me to death — can He not believe in me? Can I believe Jesus believes in me — because He is in me?

And what do I know about living as if He does believe in me? Nothing can possibly separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. And yet I doubt? Wasn’t that cross on my wrist Jesus’ sign of believing in even me — because He loved me, even though all my best things are still like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6), because He loved me enough to die on that cross even for the likes of me, because He now lives in my own broken heart me? Jesus calls us to the abundant life because He knows He can empower and ll us with His Spirit. And if He believes in us, because He Himself is actually in us, and what can be given through us — Himself — how can I not believe?

Jesus didn’t just calm one storm — He can calm all our storms.

Jesus sings grace in the wind, He pours mercy out like rain, He grows abundance up through the broken cracks of things like wheat, and a bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out. And He comes as a sign to us, a sign of the cross, a sign God’s reaching for us, believing in us, in love, in redemption, in making all things new, in making us enough because He is.

“Come, follow Me — come, I believe in you — because I’ve come to live in you.”

Excerpted with permission from Be the Gift by Ann Voskamp, copyright Ann Morton Voskamp.

* * *

Your Turn

Do you believe that Jesus believes in you — enough to wrap Himself in human flesh, enough to live this broken life alongside His own creation, enough to suffer and die for you? We want to hear from you about doubt-busting love. Come and share your thoughts with us on our blog. ~ Devotionals Daily