You are loved.
You might have heard that a million times, but it’s no less true.
You do have a Creator. He is with you. He is bigger than your situation and closer than your deepest hurt. He’s not mad. He is cheering for you and rooting for you this very second. He’s okay about all the things before. He sent His Son for that very reason.
You can put down the blade. You can throw away the pills. You can quit replaying those regrets in your head. You can quit the inner-loop of self-condemnation. You can forget your ex. You can walk away from the porn. You can resolve your conflicts right now. You can sign up to volunteer at that shelter. You can thank your parents for everything. You can hug the person next to you. You can tell the waiter, “Jesus loves you.” You can go back to church. You don’t have to sit in the back. You don’t have to prove your worth to the people you’ve let down. You don’t have to live up to everyone else’s vision for your life. You’re finally, finally free.
You are loved. I am loved.
As much as I love you, dear friend, He loves you infinitely more.
Believe it. Walk in it. Walk with Him.
God is in the business of breathing life into hurting places.
This is what He does, even for the least likely like you and me.
— J.S.
J.S. Park: Hospital Chaplain 
This true fact of eternal life still leaves me awe-struck at God every time I hear it.
Peace
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God’s love for us is incredible. Love your line, J.S., of: “God is in the business of breathing life into hurting places.” So profound.
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Yes. I think some of us need to know that God isn’t in the business of condemning or bashing.
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Thank you for the reminder.
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You are right. We are not eternal so our faults and complains cann’t last for ever. Too much time has passed in our lives and many awful things we said and did that were not in our hearts and even less in our soul. It’s over! Let us live our lives as cool as they were before a lot of people entered our friendship. Friendships last even when we talk hate and ugly words just to hurt each other. Stay in peace and let me leave in peace. Say people around you to ignore me forever. I will always love you the way I know you even I may say the contrary. You gave me splendorous moments of Faith and this I will never forget. I would like to be with you but I understand that there are a lot of reasons for you to avoid it. We know each other as well as possible to understand each other feelings whatever the circumstances. I am not God to forgive whatever it is but in my humble condition I have already forgiven and hope you may forgive me too for the great trouble I incounsciously brought to your life and for the insistences caused by a lot of stupid events that I am sure were not caused by YOU.
My problem with the church has nothing to do with all this. I simply began to feel that, in almost all religions, the churches are a beautiful white lie using God and goodness to control and use ignorant people and to use the degrees of the altar to a lot of things that have nothing to do with God and that Jesus is almost forgoten in people real life. I never doubt your Faith and, believe me, mine is today more strong than ever. Perhaps some day someone like Ratzinger and a new generation of christians would emerge and give silence, kindness and true love to this world and discover the place where happiness and freedom really live. God bless you.
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Brother Park,
Excellent encouragement. Thank you!
However, this iron is going to attempt to sharpen your iron a little as you have sharpened mine.
God is never okay with my past sins. That is a well-intentioned, sensitive-to-others comment that is actually fallacious. God is okay with ME. I am in Christ and forgiven. My sins are forgotten but He is never okay with them. He is not okay with my past, the parts where I rebelled, flipped God the bird, and set myself on the throne of my life. He forgives, forgets, but is never okay with any facet of sin – past, present, future. It is my greed, my gluttony, my lust, my arrogance, my idolatry which pounded on Jesus’ nails. Today if I choose to sin, Jesus will know of it and will be reminded once again of the Cross. He has not nor will He ever forget what He went through on the Cross – physical, mental, emotional, sensory, and spiritual torment and agony. He did it to set us free and in Christ we are free indeed! But, my past sins have never been nor will ever be okay.
I’m so glad Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe,
Indeed sin had left a crimson stain,
BUT. . . He washed it white as snow.
YEAAAAHHHH BABYYYYYY
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Sorry to write such a teological heresy. Do anyone know for sure what was the REAL life of Jesus before the Baptist ? We believe in what the Church – inspired by the biblical promess of the arrival of a Messias -taught us about his birth and the historical conditions of the time it might have happened. We ‘know’ about Maria, his biological mother blessed by Nature and the Creation, and the recognition of the fact by the Church, Around this there are some events wich gain credibility along time supported by the ‘infalibility’ of popes. How can we, if not accepting it as a dogma of the Church, believe Christ never did anything wrong? We can only believe that, if so, he acted with no intention of disrespect the the holly essence of his being and he suffered inocently the consequences of his dids. Jesus was the most peaceful revolutionary the world has known. He was the only victim of his actions and his main and only intention was return the purity and innocence to a perverted society. But we don’t know what led him to such a conclusion about the society he was brought up in. He must have lived a lot before he decided to try to show that there is a way to salvation, that men can, if they want, to change their way, He was the inspiration and he suffered as much as a human being may suffer to show that to be ‘against’ is possible if you recognise you are a God’s son and that He is waiting you in the perfect image He created. The Holly Spirit brought light to many minds across the times and let people to recognise it one way or the other but inside the same Truth.
We know nothin about the memoryof God! We don’t even know if He has a ‘memory’ since memory is linked with our concept of time and the Time of God has nothing to do with it. God Is always Present and His presence is our support. We are not victims, not even of out faults, but ways to perfection. And the way starts whenever we decide and has nothing to do with our age or regrets from a past left behind. And I think God does not expect us to awake one morning and begin to be as pure as we were the day of our birth. What He wants, I think, is that go slowly, peaceful and determined to built a more fair world and to have the courage to give our lives for what we REALLY believe to be His will.
Love
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Amen!!
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I love this post! I’m assuming by throw away the pills you mean antidepressant, etc. If I threw away my meds it would be a bad thing. My brain chemistry is messed up. Someone who has diabetes wouldn’t throw away their insulin. Nor would someone with heart disease throw away their high blood pressure medication — unless they believed they were cured, which is a possibility. I could also be cured. Until that day comes I am thankful to God for the medication that make my life normal. All true knowledge is from God. Even medical knowledge!
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Thank you! And I absolutely did not mean that at all. No way and never would. I’m a huge advocate of medicine and therapy. I’ve had depression my whole life, and it’s unfortunate the church community (and many people in general) stigmatizes those resources. Certain designer drugs, some of which come in pills, are another category of addiction, and even then I hesitate to speak on addiction because there’s so much being discovered about where it comes from and what it really is.
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Thanks for clarifying your statement.
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J.S.! Thanks for this; it was super encouraging,
-Nick
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