Do you think about Jesus when He was rejected, I wonder if His heart got hard, no it didn’t, can you imagine, as the brutal flogging was tearing His flesh not a single pebble of hardness, anger or bitterness …but rather a heart that was sad and mourning their sin, compassionate towards their rejection. How can this be? He was Holy, He was God and without sin, pure in heart completely. This is the freedom we have in Christ, understanding that we could never fulfill this without the heart of Christ and without the heart of Christ that He gives, we are hell bound for all eternity! This is His offering, and though we still can’t, our job is to be open and honest in our angst, in our hurts, in our trials and temptations – going to Him, crying out to Him Who knows and has felt in His flesh all these things, then our job is to honestly go to the inflictor, the enemy behind your pain, wanting to hide, deceive, and make you think you should hide and sweep these hurts under a rug because the enemy knows when you do that, the root of bitterness springs up, starts to form a callous wound that is so thick, you never ever deal with it. But Christ, He makes us deal with it when we know of His suffering for it! This is freedom in Christ, the freedom that nobody likes to talk about because in our hiding we are ‘good’, but in reality our hearts are selfish, sad, and sick. Christ in His mercy makes us well, He makes us honest, He makes us sincere, He makes us humble and He makes us vulnerable. None of these things are ours completely without Christ. They are the gifts of God!! In Christ Alone, I can stand, I can be bold, I can have courage, I can Love…He gives it all! He alone changes His people because of Who He is, and The gift of His Spirit Indwelling each person Whom He died for. Not only that, He bounds and keeps us for all eternity, the sheep that once was lost is now found by The Shepherd