Psalm 18
I was sixteen years old.
I sat in a crowd of other teenagers, feeling the high that a week at a Christian camp brings. For five days, I'd drowned in a sea of amazing praise music and preaching and awesome conversations with other believers.
But all was not well in my heart. There was a darkness residing in me. I knew Christ had saved me. I knew the Bible pretty well. I knew how I was *supposed* to be living. I knew how to create that facade of innocence and shininess.
But inside, I was heartbroken. Things weren't going so well. I had been dumped by the boy I was convinced would be my husband one day. I struggled with feeling valuable in light of all the stupid decisions I had made. I was marred by my own willful sins. I was trying to make sense of the mess I had made. I was wondering if my Christian walk would always be hollow and forced.
God knew what was in my heart. And He was ready to meet me.
It was a Friday night, the last night of camp. The last message till next year. And it was a message like I'd never quite heard before.
One of my favorite speakers that week had been Ken Rudolph. All of us enjoyed him. He was funny and did a good job of making sense of faith to a few hundred teenagers. I honestly expected to be slightly entertained that night, not to be forced to my knees.
Ken didn't really "sermonize" that night. He made a few remarks about the background of the passage, I'm sure. But what I remember vividly over a decade later was the meat of his message.
He simply read Psalm 18 to us.
But not like I'd heard the Bible read. Not with monotone or slight interest. He read it as if he was David, as if he was the object of God's intense focus found in that chapter. As if all the thunder and protection of Heaven was for him. Tears thickened his voice as he proclaimed each word.
I had never really felt that way before. I knew God loved me, but I'd never *known* it. I'd been so focused on my end of the bargain, the things I was supposed to be doing for Him, how I should have been acting. I thought this whole relationship between us was supposed to be me pleasing Him all the time.
I'd missed the fact that He loved me, regardless of my actions. That He sent Christ to die for me long before I had any idea that I was supposed to be good for Him. That I was His child, His daughter, a precious infant that He cradled in his arms and would shoot arrows from Heaven to protect, even if I had made giant messes in my past like David had.
God knew all the ugliness in my heart. He knew all my failures--even the ones that were still ahead of me. He knew my doubts, my frustrations, my fears. He knew I felt ridiculously inadequate as a human being, let alone a Christian.
But He didn't care. He loved me still. More than I would ever understand.
There was peace in that love. I still had a lot more to learn about it (still do), but in considering it at that moment in that hot gymnasium, there was peace. Which was something I longed for, since everything seemed so chaotic in my mind. And that peace would draw me in, like a warm wave crashing over me, enveloping me in love like I had never known, over and over and over again.
Sometimes I forget that I'm important to God, because of trials or sins or because I know I'm SO NOT WORTH the fuss. But I go back to Psalm 18, and I read it with tears in my eyes and sense that peace in the face of all these storms and uncertainties. I am loved. In spite of everything, I am loved.
Comments