I've been doing a heck of a lot of reflecting lately, much of it centered around my relationship with God and where I fall short. OK, the truth is, due to my fallen nature, I fall short all around, and no amount or quality of "good deeds" will ever redeem me. Only Jesus Christ's blood sacrifice on the cross some 2,000 years ago will atone, so long as I am in Him and He in me.
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Romans 3:23, NIV
When we receive Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, Lord, and King, His blood covers all, we receive the Holy Spirit (God the Third Person), and all we have to do is obey whatever the Holy Spirit tells us.
“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” John 14:15-21, NIV
When Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to His disciples (and to all believers since that day), we are no longer bound by the law (a heavy burden) but rather by whatever the Holy Spirit prompts us to do (a light burden):
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30, NIV
So when I say the phrase "where I fall short," what I mean is directly related to what God the Holy Spirit had specifically commanded me to do (or not to do), and I've done the opposite. I've alluded to it some in my last post, regarding a specific command related to a couple of key relationships currently in my life. If I repent (and I do) and remain/abide in Christ, then I'm not beholden to all the zillion Old Testament commandments (as well as some New Testament commandments and New Testament interpretations of Old Testament commandments). Rather, I'm only beholden to what the Holy Spirit tells me as I spend time with the Lord. And I believe this is the understanding that has been given me by the Lord regarding Jesus's statement "for My yoke is easy and My burden is light", especially considering that He also promises all His disciples and believers of future generations the Holy Spirit.
One of the things I've wrestled with as I approach my upcoming wedding are some flesh thoughts regarding this event. Simply put, my flesh thinks that this will be the biggest and most significant day of my life since I graduated college. But there's a problem: I received Jesus Christ as my Savior, Lord and King in 2013, after I finished school but before I met my love. That right there is and should be the most significant day of my life, period, because it affects not only my life but my eternity.
It brings to my mind a different kind of thought process that also revealed the state of my flesh. Back in the winter of my freshman year in college, I had a powerful experience with the Holy Spirit during praise & worship time with other Bible-believers and Jesus-followers at FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes), that compelled me to get up front and share my testimony. I don't remember many of the details of what I shared (high-level: I basically shared about my experiences needing to leave my previous church and how painful that was), but I remember feeling like this was an out-of-body experience as I was sharing. I also felt God reveal to me two fellow students to connect with further and talk about faith (two guys I already knew but not well). Bottom line, it was a great day and night of joy and fellowship with God and with other believers, and was the second such instance in my life where I felt and experienced love from many other individuals in the group. (The first such instance was via the youth group thrown together a year prior to provide some kind of spiritual stability for us teens while our church was going through intense tumult.) What set this experience with FCA apart is that I was being loved by others with God's love, and not with human love (if there was any, even today I cannot tell).
A couple months later I experienced again this communal love while on a mission trip to rural Arkansas with 11 others over spring break. We were a tight-knit group, and every moment of that trip was pure amazingness. As I look back, there may have been somewhat less of a saturation of people loving each other with God's love, and somewhat of a greater saturation of people loving each other with human love (after all, two of the folks in our group ended up marrying, and one of the other women in our crew ended up dating two of the other men at some point later). But nonetheless, between the trip to Arkansas and the tight-knit experiences a couple months earlier at various FCA events, God used those to reveal to me that experiencing true love - His love - was very much a possibility and a real thing.
And yet, after all that, six months later, my childhood best friend and I went to the local amusement park (my first time going... we would make an annual trip of this over the next 8 or so years). I rode on a bona fide roller coaster for the first time and got hooked. When I got home I posted on Facebook about my experience, with a photograph from the event. I forget if I declared this to be the best day all year (including above the experiences described in the previous two paragraphs), or if I declared it to be the best day since I experienced the Holy Spirit six or seven months earlier. Unfortunately, what was true in my heart at that time was that I considered the day at the amusement park to be even better.
This is what I mean regarding reflecting on my relationship with God and where I fall short. Trials tend to expose our true, worst selves. I'm sure you have heard the phrase: that person just revealed their true colors. And I'm sure you know the context in which such a phrase is typically uttered: that person exposed their worst selves which they've been hiding all this time, and this is who they truly are. They've been lying to us all this time.
It's not wrong. After all, this is what Scripture has to say about our hearts:
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:9, NIV
The truth is that the choice to receive - or reject - Jesus Christ as one's personal Savior, Lord, and King is the most significant event of anyone's life, because this sets the course for one's own eternity. After that, being born and dying are the next-most significant events in one's life, as these are the only dates listed on one's tombstone, for those still living afterward to remember the individual who had lived. Beyond that... one's life events are otherwise insignificant in the grand scheme of things. You have to look up in a book (or on Wikipedia) to find out when Johann Sebastian Bach was appointed his most prestigious job, or when Abraham Lincoln married his wife, or when Frank Lloyd Wright's father passed away. It is not to say that those events weren't significant to those who were alive at the time and close to the individuals in question. Finishing college and getting one's bachelor's degree is still something. A person is more likely to get hired with a useful bachelor's degree than without. Getting married is also arguably one of the most significant events aside from birth, salvation (receiving or rejecting), and death, as who you marry will undoubtedly determine the future of the family tree.
But I've been guilty, even this far in to life, of putting earthly events over spiritual events. Jesus is the only cure to that, as He is to all things. When the Bible says that the heart is beyond cure, that means all other cures aside from Jesus Himself. I tried therapy for a decade, and it really did help. But as the last three years have shown, it cannot fix everything, and there's a lot it cannot fix. Walking with God and having that personal relationship with Jesus is the only thing.
As for why I'm calling this a memory stone even though the events prompting this one are still ongoing, reflections and reactions to current events often invoke memories of and decisions from previous seasons. This is both a memory stone from the past as well as a memory stone in the making. I am getting married next month, and it will indeed be one of the most significant days of my life, not just due to long-term ramifications, but also to the round of changes that this event will prompt in the here and now. Certainly, there's a point to be made for comparing this to when I finished college, as the entire fabric and focus of my life completely changed. But, receiving Jesus Christ as my personal Savior, Lord, and King changes the fabric of both my life and my eternity. My heart (and everyone else's hearts) must reflect that.