love of Christ – Erin Ulerich

Those Walking in Darkness Need the Light

The people who walk in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine. (Isaiah 9:2)

Darkness pressed down like a heavy coat, swallowing everyone in the cave. For one minute we stood in complete darkness and silence. Even though my husband was standing right beside me, within seconds the first fearful thought popped into my head.

I am alone.

Of course, I wasn’t. I was surrounded on every side by members of our group as we toured Mammoth Cave.

But in the darkness, I felt alone. Trapped.

Within seconds scenes from every murder-mystery I’d ever seen or read came to mind. I thought about the others in the group. Who are these people? I don’t even know them. I tightened my grip on my backpack straps and distrust rose in my heart.

Thankfully the minute passed, our tour guides turned their lanterns back on, everyone laughed, breathed a sigh of relief, and we went on with the remainder of our 14-mile tour.

It took less than a minute for fear to surface when I was standing in literal darkness. And that makes me wonder:

Does fear surface in any type of darkness?

What about the people all around us who are walking in figurative darkness? Searching for fulfilment, purpose, peace, and happiness without any light. Surrounded by fear and distrust without hope of rescue. Or so they believe.

But we know that light shines in the darkness. And we know the Light of the World who came to rescue us, the One who came to be our hope.

Light broke through deepest darkness when God put on flesh and stepped into our world. He came as a tiny light, wrapped in the most vulnerable package.

He came in a way that we could receive Him.

If He had come like He did on Mount Sinai; we might have turned away in fear. In Exodus, the people were told to get ready, get clean, and not to touch the mountain or they would die. In contrast, Jesus came on a dark night, in a dirty stable, and only a few knew the Light had come.

Jesus came to show us what God is like, how deeply He loves us, and how we can follow Him.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. As the Word, He brought thoughts from the innermost recesses of people’s hearts out into the light. He was gentle with those who were struggling, patient with those who didn’t even know they needed Him until He spoke to them. He challenged those who thought they had Him all figured out.

Jesus saw people living in figurative darkness and it moved him. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Matthew 9:36)

Maybe they were tossed around by fear, suspicion, and distrust. Maybe they were seeking fulfilment, purpose, and peace in things that could never deliver. Maybe they felt trapped, like they would never be free from the darkness.

And He told them Whoever follows me will have the light of life. (John 8:12)

The light of life He offers shines brighter than a tour guide’s lantern and points us to the answer our hearts were made to search for – One who loves us beyond all measure. One who is always with us. One who shines light in the darkest places of our lives.

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We celebrate the coming of the Light of the world at Christmas, but we need this truth every day of the year. Discover the themes of Christmas in everyday life through my newly released book of short devotions In Unexpected Ways: Christmas in Everyday Life.

Jesus Is With Us In Our Joy and Our Pain

God’s desire from the beginning has been fellowship. To be with us.

God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Face to face. When sin entered the world, that relationship was broken, but God’s desire did not change. Throughout the Old Testament His heart cry is repeated, “I will be their God and they will be my people.”

This desire is also found in the language surrounding the reason God offers us salvation through relationship with Him, “They shall see him face to face.”

That’s the goal. Connection. Intimacy. God created each one of us with the need for connection, the need to know and be known by Him.

And then he opened the folds of time and stepped into our world as one of us. Jesus, Immanuel, which means God with us.

With us. Not watching from a distance. Not a kind but powerless force hovering around us. With us, experiencing life in this broken world.

Jesus knows the pull of this world on our heart. He experienced every emotion that we have felt or will ever feel. And he has experienced one emotion that we will never experience – abandonment by God.

We often feel alone, I’m not discounting that. But the reality is that God has promised to be with us and to never forsake us. Jesus willingly experienced complete abandonment on the cross in order to offer us peace with God.

Why is God being with us important? What difference does it make?

We have an enemy that works overtime to make us feel isolated, misunderstood, abandoned. He knows that when we feel alone and vulnerable, we are more apt to listen to his lies. We were made for connection and intimacy, so when we feel alone it is easy for our hearts to make this false conclusion: I am not known, therefore I am not loved.

Jesus is with us, out of love for us, to draw us into relationship with Him. In Jesus we are known, loved, connected – the very things we were created to experience.

Because Jesus experienced life in our skin, He is with us in our joy and in our pain.

Pain is part of living in this broken world. We feel pain on many different levels, and we usually work hard to avoid pain on every level. We avoid it by staying busy, numbing out on Netflix, eating, not eating, drinking alcohol, shopping, working, working out, the list is endless. We want to avoid pain so much that we even take good things and twist them to keep numb instead of stopping and looking our pain in the eye.

And the main problem with all the numbing that we do is this truth: We were not made to live life numb. We were made to push through the fear, look our pain square in the eye, and live life in full.

Does that sound scary? You bet.

But we don’t do it alone.

Jesus stands with us when we face our pain. He guides us into healthy ways of living and thinking and acting. His resources are not limited, and He will provide what we need to face our pain.

On the podcast This Good Word With Steve Wiens, Seth Haines says this on the episode called Inner Sobriety.

“The foundational question is, Can I sit in my pain and feel it without needing to eat, drink, do whatever, look at porn? Can I sit in that pain, can I invite Christ into that pain and then can I cultivate a prayerful imagination of what it looks like for Christ to walk in that pain with me?”

What is your pain? Can you imagine Jesus speaking into your pain? What do you think He would say?

We are not alone in our pain. Jesus stepped from the perfection of heaven into the broken chaos of this world to walk with us. Our God is with us every step of the way.

And what a difference that makes!

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Please join me on my writer’s Facebook page, Erin Ulerich, on Wednesdays in December as we explore the question “What difference does Jesus make?” I’ll be on live (and attempting to speak in complete sentences) at 6:00 a.m. CST, but the video will be available to watch whenever you can. My prayer is that in those moments our hearts will lean toward Jesus in adoration and praise. My hope is that we will enter our day stronger and more peaceful.

O come let us adore Him.

We Were Made for Meaning

Late one night when the noises in the dorm rooms around me faded, I sat on my floor asking big questions. Why am I here? What am I supposed to do with my life?

It was my Junior year at Belhaven College. Only one more year until graduation. Shouldn’t I know what I wanted to be when I grew up by now?

In those quiet moments I read 2 Corinthians 5:14.

For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, for but Him who died for them and rose again.

From this verse I gathered that I was supposed to live for Christ and not for myself.

But what does it mean to live for Christ?

If I had written this post on that night twenty-something years ago, I would probably have written a list, a “10 Ways to Live For Him” that would have sounded very spiritual and pretty near impossible. I’m sure an hour-long devotion at 5:00 am before your big toe hits the floor would have made the list.

Thank goodness blogging hadn’t been invented yet.

The truth is that “living for Him and not for ourselves” will probably look different for each of us. It even looks different in each season of our own lives. Living for Him may involve caring for your mother or father while they struggle with cancer or Alzheimer’s. It may involve changing 1,234 diapers in a season of caring for babies. It may mean waiting. Waiting for a relationship, waiting for a child, waiting for an answer. Waiting and clinging to His promises.

But behind the scenes “living for Him and not for ourselves” looks pretty similar in each of our lives. Living for Him involves getting to know Him and learning to hear His voice.

We get to know Him by talking to Him through prayer, by reading His Word, by being part of a community of people who are also living for Him, a place where our faith can be encouraged and strengthened.

The word for compels is a Greek word that means to hold together, to compress, to arrest. The love of Christ holds us together.

The word compels mean to force or drive, especially to a course of action.What action does the love of Christ drive us to?

When we grasp what He has done for us, the love of Christ toward us drives us to live for Him, and not for ourselves. We live for Him in response to His love for us.

My 10 ways – list-making-college-self lived for Him in order to earn His love. What a waste. The glorious truth is that We already have His love! The life He lived and the death He died is proof of His love for us. There is nothing to earn, but plenty to be thankful for.

In the process of living for Him we get to know Him. As we get to know Him we grow closer to Him. And no matter what our season of life looks like on the outside, growing closer to Him brings meaning to our life.