But Do I Have to?

By Emily Sandefur

I have a bad attitude this week.  We’re back in language school for a couple months and it’s wearing me out.  Turns out it takes a stinking lot of time and work to actually be good at a language!  You see, I’m at a point now where I’m basically fluent in German- I can communicate just about anything I need to, but I make a lot of mistakes and I’m certainly not very elegant.  The thing is, we’ll always make mistakes in the language, but we really need to be able to communicate intricacies in spiritual truth.  We need to be able to really understand our friends when they talk about their deepest heart desires, wishes, hurts, hopes and dreams.  I need to get better at the language because understanding and communicating difficult topics in German shows Germans love.  But that’s so hard to remember when I’m faced with figuring out 15 new ways to say “because” (each corresponding with a completely different grammar structure, of course!) and all I can think is “WHY can’t I just say ‘Because’?!?!”

Today it hit me that Jesus went to all kinds of crazy, and probably seemingly unnecessary lengths to show us love.  I imagine conversations like this going on between He and the Father: “Do I have to do this whole 40 days in the desert being tempted thing?  Can’t I just be tempted once and check that box?”  That might sound really blasphemous, but I actually don’t think it is.  I’m fascinated by the scene of Jesus begging the Father to “take this cup” from him before the cross.  Jesus made huge sacrifices in order to love us and bring us the possibility of a relationship with God.   And it seems that even for him, sometimes the sacrifices seemed like way too much, and He actually begged God to not make him go through that.  I’m thankful that God thought we were worth that sacrifice.

I’m starting to realize that maybe I should be more worried if there’s nothing in my life that makes me say, “Really God? Do I have to?”  Because there are a lot of people around us whom God thinks worthy of great sacrifice.

What crazy, sacrificial thing is God asking from you this week in order to love others and bring them the possibility of a relationship with God?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The purpose of a blog is to encourage spiritual discourse in our community. As such, posts are generally not edited for content, and may not represent the positions of Grace Bible Church.