You Belong to Me

"You can't expect to be perfect
        It's a fight you've got to forfeit
You belong to me whatever you do
           So lay down your weapon--
Darling, take a deep breath and
Believe that I love you."
Andrew Peterson

There's this song that I've played more in one day than I've played any one song in a lifetime. Something about the words kept bringing me back to the repeat button, so I started to really listen, and then I asked God what He was wanting me to hear. 

His heart began to unfold, tears began to flow, and my hands lifted to cover my eyes.

I saw His heart of calling imperfect people to live out His story--imperfectly. Ever since that glorious day on Mount Sanai when He spoke His precious law to Moses, He knew that we could never do it. As Moses clutched the beloved law in his hands with Joshua by his side, the people below were already steeped in disobedience. And God wasn't surprised. Angry, yes, but not surprised.

He knew they would mark up that perfect law with their dirty, grimy, bloody fingers, and He gave it to them anyway. He gave them holiness--anyway.

He wanted them to seek that law every day and see that they couldn't do it. He wanted them to look at those words and see their imperfection, in order that He might continually point them toward the promise of a Redeemer. God gave them pages and pages of regulations and laws to show them how desperately they needed a Savior. The regulations were beautiful--reflecting elements of Christ Himself--and the priests performed each in reverence and solemnity, but they were merely priests until the Priest could fulfill every bloody sacrifice and satisfy every meticulous regulation--perfectly.

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"And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." Hebrews 10:11-14

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And that's why I wept--because I serve a God who has satisfied my imperfection, and since the very moment He spoke His law, never intended His people to be anything other than imperfect. We are called to be aware, yes, but not perfect: for the glory of God and illumination of His redemption.

Perfection: the fight we've got to forfeit. It's already been won by our Messiah as the complete fulfillment of every law that we were given and couldn't follow. That should invoke joy in imperfection and worship toward our King!

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I've been pretty aware of my imperfections lately. Life's been fuller than it's ever been, and it leaves me coming to my sweet Father tired, brokenhearted, and empty. But He looks at me in the eyes and says, "Daughter, you belong to me, whatever you do."