why i love Jesus

First of all. He first loved me. Even when I was that "good" Christian girl...the one who thought she was a fantastic person, He showed me the refuse in my heart.

I don't remember when I first loved Jesus. I mean truly loved Him.

For many years I loved Him in the same way I love summer or macaroni or swimming pools. It was a very categorized love. An "inside this box" love, if you will. I loved to learn more about Him on Sundays and in the home. He was a pretty awesome guy after all.

I loved to love Jesus, but I didn't love Jesus.

Not until I saw my sin.



When I saw my own sin, it made me sick to my stomach. For many years, I categorized sin the same way I categorized Jesus.

Sin is for sometimes, Jesus is for sometimes. As long as you have a balance, you're ok. And honestly, I wasn't a bad person by the world's standards.

I wasn't getting high or having sex. I wasn't screaming at my parents or skipping church. I wasn't doing anything that would outwardly make me look like anything less than a well-dressed Pharisee.

And Pharisees serve in VBS. They take out the garbage without being asked. They teach Bible stories to younger siblings. But they do it for themselves. They do it for the applause. They do it because "loving Jesus" is just so much fun when people notice that you love Jesus.

But when I saw that even though I was outwardly doing all these good things, if I wasn't doing it for someone else, it really didn't mean that much to me. Reading my Bible was an absolute chore. Praying was something I did to get things for myself. And, oh, by the way, I was a really good pray-er.

I could recite verses to you. Oh yes, I could. I could fool everyone, even myself. But God knew the true depravity that laid in my heart.

There were many sins just waiting to happen. All I would have needed was an outlet. But God showed me that I AM NOT GOOD,

I AM NOT GOOD. I AM NOT GOOD.

Not even I, the church girl who "loved Jesus," was seeking after God. I didn't love Jesus. Not truly.

But I love Jesus now. I love Him because He showed me that I'm a pretty horrible person. I have all the capacity in the world to start a World War, kill infants, pervert creation, and curse God. I was who Romans 1:18 is talking about. I was the devil's pet. I was the prodigal son.

And yet, He somehow loved me first. He loved this maggot-filled corpse and brought it back to life.

So why do I love Jesus? Because when I was without God, He loved me. He gave me what my own efforts could not, a heart that loved Jesus.

Forget for a second that Jesus also gives you eternal life and a purpose here....He gives you a new heart. A new heart.

He makes you want to be more like Him. He makes you want to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

why I love Jesus...in short, because he first loved me