Scandalous

There’s a song I love to listen to called “Reckless Love” by Corey Asbury. I watched a YouTube video of him singing it live. He stops towards the end of the song and talks about where the song came from.

He says “The way He loves is reckless. He is utterly unconcerned with the consequences of His actions with regard to His own safety, comfort, and well-being.” “His love is not cautious. He sent His own Son to die a gruesome death for us.” “He gives His heart so completely, so preposterously that, if refused, we would think it irreparably broken. Yet He gives Himself away again and again and again.” He finishes by saying, “His love saw me, a broken down kid, with regret as deep as the ocean…He found me and He put me on His shoulders and carried me home. Because He’s just that good, He’s just that kind. He’s a Father that never gives up.”

The lyrics of the song have ministered to my heart in a mighty way since I first began listening to it. “Oh the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.”

He has a scandalous and, yes, reckless love.

I think about the experiences I have had with love. And I think about my encounter with the One who loves me recklessly. I think about where I’ve been, the decisions I’ve made, the way I have used myself and allowed myself to be used, the dark alleys and shadowy places I’ve walked. I am a child of the King, and I have lived as if I were homeless.

Then I think about how His heart must have broken during my wandering. How He must have hurt to see the choices that wounded and scarred me. How He must have mourned to see His child wandering lost and destitute, begging for scraps and pitifully grateful to accept the moldy crumbs that were offered, when He held a universe of love in His heart for me and longed to shower me with it.

I am unable to find words to describe how His love has transformed me.

And yet, that’s just what He does, how He loves. Recklessly, scandalously, and transformatively.

The Bible is filled with accounts of Jesus’s reckless love. He reached out to notorious sinners, to the infamous, to the scandalous, the immoral, the unrighteous, the depraved and the desperate. I have been each one of those things, and He reached out to me.

It hurts my heart to hear of people who don’t believe Jesus loves them. If I can do anything in my life, with my life, I would desperately want to meet them eye to eye and tell them with every bit of urgency in me that He does. There’s no sin big enough, no fall far enough, no hole deep enough, no distance great enough, to keep Him from loving you.

There’s a deep, dark despair that tells you you’re the one person He won’t love. Sister, that’s a lie. It’s simply not true. I pray that you will hear this, know this, and that this truth will set you free from that lie.

There’s nothing you could ever do that would be too much for Him to love.

Before the world began, before God started the clock ticking, before He spoke any part of this universe into existence, He loved you. He knew you. He knew the sins you would commit. He knew the lies you would believe. He knew how far you would fall, how wounded and scarred you would be. And He loved you.

He loves you now. He loves you when it doesn’t make sense. When you’ve done nothing to deserve it. He loves you when you have turned your back on Him, when you’ve closed your ears to His call. He loves you when you’ve sat alone in the dark wondering how your life has come to this. He loves you when you’re facing consequences to your choices, consequences that will destroy your life.

He loves you if you’re sitting in a prison cell. He loves you if you’re sitting in a comfortable but empty home.

He loves you even though no one else in your life ever has.

He will continue to love you if you never turn to Him. It will break His heart, but he won’t stop loving you. He will love you whether you choose Him or not. He wants you to. He wants to show you how much He loves you. He wants that more than anything.

I don’t know who this post is for. I pray it finds its home. This is not what I set out to write, but it’s where He lead me. Maybe it’s what He wanted to say to you.

He loves you. Without regard to His own safety, comfort, or well-being. Scandalously.