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.. let me explain what sense of self I am speaking of…It has been a long journey and I am still walking…

There is so much more data now regarding shame and vulnerability, about having a healthy sense of self. Not a narcissist type self but the real us…Of course, this data has always been in scripture for us but it is still a process.

One of the greatest theologians of the 19th century said, “there was no lower that Jesus could go.  Jesus could not have been more disgraced and degraded when he humbly went to the Cross for us.”    Charles Spurgeon

When I finally saw by a supernatural “knowing”  that Jesus freely gave up his God -ness so he might be humiliated beyond all description and paid the debt that every human born of Adam owed to God’s love,  that is when I gained a sense of self. He thought me worthy of leaving His Godliness and coming to earth. He counted it all JOY to be scorned, spit upon, shamed and stripped naked for the world and to have his name and integrity made a mockery and God the Father to see.

I am undone not with guilt and shame any longer but with a humility and gratitude so different than anything I have ever known…

The humiliations done to Jesus cannot  be compared to even the most gruesome heinous  crime that our minds might imagine. I believe  as much as I know the darkness of the human race it is impossible for me to know how low the Christ of all creation went for me. In this fact I found my true sense of self.  I am not just the sinner who put Jesus on the Cross but the new creation who humbly KNOWS that I put Jesus there yet he found and will always find me worth going to the extreme ignominy for.

I have the Friend, the Savior, the Creator of all things, and the only Son of God go willingly to a death of total humiliation and agony on every level a human can because He loves me and wants to give me a whole and Holy sense of self with Him. He not only loves me but he delights in me, he trusts me with the Truth, with His very presence in my life…that severe Mercy that makes me Holy…It is too much for me to take in half the time and is freely given to all who will trust…

As the Christmas celebration of the Magnificent Jesus coming to earth as a child awakens in me anew,  a sense of self that I do not have to perform for, be religious for, or wear a mask for who (my self) I cannot be. My sense of self lies in the one fact that my covering robe is the Righteous Christ and my Self has no other…

“But as for you, you meant evil against me, BUT GOD meant it for good… ” Genesis 50:20