He still died for me

I sat in my bed this morning, like usual, to spend my time with God. Recently, I have been working through a study from the book Bad Girls of the Bible by Liz Curtis Higgs. I am almost at the end of the study. The last Bad Girl we study is the sinful woman in Luke 7:36-50.

This is by far the most powerful woman I have studied in the bible. Over the last few days I have found myself almost in tears, my heart so moved by Love and compelled to worship. 

I was going through various verses in the bible that talk about how truly amazing our God's forgiveness is. I was led to a familiar verse. 

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

My study book asked me to put it in my own words so this is what I wrote: 

God loves me so deeply that, even though He knew that I would never stop sinning nor would I ever be worthy, He still sent Christ to die for my sins.

Jesus knew that I would never stop sinning when He gave His life for me. It is rare for someone to love someone so deeply to actually give up their life for that person. And if that is the case, the person they would be dying for is probably a pretty noble person. But oh no, Jesus died for all people whether they were worthy of it or not. Not only that He died knowing that they would never cease to sin. 

I am just in awe of God's great love for me. 

This compelled another thought in my mind concerning the young men we work with. 

There are days that I see them making huge leaps forward. Their behaviours are changing, they are more interested in Christ, they are becoming respectful and loving towards one another and their community, they are gaining hope and responsibility, and so on. 

But then there are days that I feel like they are going no where. 

This weekend we had a game in town. As the boys were getting dressed, Kelvin smelled marijuana. One of the boys was smoking (which we do not tolerate at all). He went over to where they were sitting and tried to see who it was but they all denied it. He came back to sit with me. I turned around towards the boys and saw a huge puff of smoke coming from behind a tree. I couldn't see who it was but some of the other boys could see. I told Kelvin and he went over again to try confront them but they all denied it. 

I was so hurt. We do so much for them and yet they have the guts to break the simple rules that we have made and lie to us? 

Then I found out today that one of them took some plastic cups out of Kelvin's bag and decided to take them home (they are the only cups that I own in my house). Seriously? Why must you steal my cups? 

One of our boys, who we put into school, has been skipping (for some legit reasons and some lazy reasons) and we have been notified that he has also been getting into marijuana. Ugh! 

It just hurts. After we put so much prayer, love, finances, time, effort and emotions into them. 

But then I think of what Christ did for me. He gave His entire life for me knowing that I would still sin against Him. It probably hurts Him too. 

And you know what baffles me even more? The fact that Christ knew that I would never stop sinning! Yes, I may become like Him but I will always hurt Him with my sins. 

I do all this for the boys with the hope that they will become amazing men of God. But I do not know if they will really turn out that way. And I wonder that if I knew what they would be like in 10 years, would I still do these things for them? If I knew that the one boy we put into school was going to end up being a drug dealer, would I still support him? I honestly don't know. 

But Christ did it for me. 

And that's amazing.