By Lucas Pruett

Last week was my first week as a columnist for the Southern Torch. I have heard some great feedback already and I’m thankful for that. Please remember that you are more than welcome to respond to my articles at writingonpurpose@gmail.com. I will always answer and would love the chance to interact with you. For my first article, I purposely attempted to give you something practical to practice. I hope that you have been offering up your “first five” minutes to resolve in the Lord. Jehoshaphat would be so proud of you. I want to shoot from the hip this week and just share a word from my heart. Here we go!

I have been in a transition stage in my life and God the Father is taking me on a breathtaking journey of looking deep within my heart. When traveling to those depths, I haven’t found only pleasant things. I have noticed that I have deep hurts that haven’t been dealt with, bitterness, and many bad roots. He is daily performing root canals on me and it hasn’t been a happy ride. Honestly, the shame in my heart makes me want to hide. It’s like Adam and Eve in the Garden after they have sinned. They go hide behind bushes as the Father approaches them. I can relate to that in this season. A big question I keep asking myself is: “Do I really know how much God loves me?”. That may seem like a trivial question to you. Bible school taught me the answer to that one and each Sunday that passes I’m reminded of God’s immense love through worship and sermons. However, its when I stop the noise and slow down that I have to think on the questions that we all should inventory our lives with. Do I really know though? Do I really believe that He DELIGHTS in me? Do I marvel in the fact that He uniquely designed me? And just in transperancy, sometimes I’m not quick to answer yes to that. It feels my head has a lot of knowledge built up about the love of the Father but I wonder if my heart is really embracing that knowledge? I wonder as I write this if you feel the same way. If you had to ask yourself that question then could you really answer that you do know without a doubt that he loves you and knows you personally?

Paul prayed a special prayer over the house church in Ephesus. He prays that God would help them “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (3:18). I just love that description of the love of the Father. The process of embracing God’s love means that we will go on a journey to grasp width, length, height, and depth. It is all encompassing and ever present. We literally can not escape it. Out of that scripture and knowledge, I come back to my question. I’m sitting here now as I have many times and I ponder on that love that is deep, wide, long, high and a tear forms in my eyes. God, the one who created everything and has amazing angels praising Him every single day for eternity, loves me individually and I can know it through the person of Christ. I can know that the Father is crazy about me because Jesus died and rose again. My hope can rest on that empty grave. Brothers and sisters, please lean into that truth with me. You can know the Father’s intense love for you by looking at the sacrifice of Christ. That empty grave shows that God is absolutely enamored by you. He thinks about you daily and delights in your journey. Through Jesus and his resurrection power, this truth can travel from your head and invade your heart. Child of God, join me in coming out of hiding. Today, we can be set free by the truth. Let us journey to the place where we escape the noise. In this place, the Father can whisper into our hearts: “I created you, I know you and I love you. You are my favorite creation and I delight in you. You are my child.”