Safe and Secure
by Katie Rippy
I recently went to a parenting conference that shared the importance of cultivating an emotionally safe home. An emotionally safe home is one in which family members can find community through the expression and naming of emotions. It is a home that each member is free. They can engage and share their lives in unhindered unhidden ways. In an emotionally safe home, family members have more than just facts about one another, they are known by one another in such a way they feel understood, forgiven, and encouraged. God is fostering this sort of home for us in His love! When God invites us to love him with all our heart and mind, he is joining two sides of our thinking and saying love me with both of these. For many years I knew God through the factual side of my brain. I knew of his character and his love, but I had not experienced it. I received his salvation along with the weight of expectation for a changed life. I had not felt safe enough to be known. I knew God was perfect and I was not. I knew He was just and I wanted to be everything He would want me to be to show Him that His sacrificial love for me was a good move on His part. I wanted to make His love “worth it.” I thought this desire to serve Him was love. I thought this exchange of receiving his love for my guilt-riddled striving was love. It wasn’t. I didn’t have a clue how truly safe God’s love was for me. I was hiding.
Love is relational. Love is more than a posture by which we can relate to others or something. Love in its truest definition cannot be exchanged with the word like. We feel love when we are seen and heard. We feel love when another’s eyes light up to greet us. We feel love when our needs are met beyond courtesy, but with joy! Love is deep and is relational. More than a feeling, it is a relational dynamic in which our core identity is known and accepted. This is the love God offers us. He knows us. He sees our heart, our core identity, and is not shy in His pursuit to love us. When it comes to our own righteousness, or lack thereof, Christ comes in with an exchange. His perfect righteousness covers us like a warm cozy blanket seeping into our skin so much that we begin to walk in it, however, this covering is not a mask. We don’t hide behind it and pretend to arrive to its expectation. We don’t have to analyze its effectiveness in our lives. It is grace manifest over our frame and our new righteousness is wholly ours beyond what we can see or how dimly we may judge ourselves by it. We know this, because the Holy Spirit goes beyond the covering to indwelling. God himself indwells us. We cannot hide from Him, nor does He wish us to. He moves in with gentle love and says, I accept you as my daughter/son. I see you and cherish you. He loves us, so that we can love Him. He goes first. And this relational truth overcomes my fear and I am truly known by my Creator in such a way that I feel it deeply as a part of my core identity. This love is secure, unrelenting, and makes me free! God’s received love compels me to love and accept others for the sake of expressing what I have experienced! This truth, this experienced vital to survival truth, permeates my life and fills me with J-O-Y!
His love becomes a Mighty Fortress. It is one my soul clings to and finds solid and steadfast. In His love, I not only know, but I feel just how much Jesus has fought for me! I can see Satan’s defeat! I cry in praise that my sin is no longer on my account. Though the world and its tricks can at times overwhelm me, though the fear and terrors call to grip me, blind me, and bind me; I know I am safe and secure in the unfailing inexhaustible love of God the Father, shored up and advocated for by the Son, Jesus Christ, and interceded for and truly known by the Holy Spirit. I no longer hide from God, but I rest nestled under His wing! And this Love is for you too! Can you perceive it?!
Enjoy this old hymn and new little chorus I added. I love it all, but some of the last line is most meaningful to me today, “The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him who with us sideth…
And His kingdom is forever! (click the pink the letters to hear it)
Mighty Fortress, by Katie Rippy
A Mighty Fortress A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing Our helper he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing For still our ancient foe does seek to work us woe His craft and power are great and armed with cruel hate On earth is not his equal Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing Were not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing Does ask who that may be, Christ Jesus it is he Lord Sabbath, his name from age to age the same And He must win the battle A might fortress is You, our God. In You, our strength is made complete And armed with faith, oH we are victorious For the glory of our Lord and King, Jesus! And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us We will not fear for God has willed His truth to triumph through us The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him His rage we can endure, for lo his doom is sure One little word shall fell him, Jesus! A mighty fortress is You, our God In You, our strength is made complete And armed with faith, oH we are victorious For the glory of our Lord and King, Sweet Jesus! (repeat) The word above all earthly powers no thanks to them abideth The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him who with us sideth Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also The body they may kill, God's truth abideth still And His kingdom is forever!
