How true is that? How freeing?
This very thing has been on my heart a lot lately. I've spent so many years of my Christian walk surrounded by perfection, people who said the right things, did the right things. They looked good. They looked a lot better than me. But the people who have touched my life, the people that have truly, deeply led me closer to Christ, they were ragamuffins. The older I get, the more I believe that you can't make a bit of difference in this world without being authentic. I won't lie, I hate that word. Authentic. It gets tossed around by hip, young church leaders wearing skinny jeans and sports jackets. They know all the cool things to do and say. Maybe I'm just jealous because they look better than me too. They know how to be cool, relatable, appealing. Being authentic is cool now, after all.
But the thing is, the gospel isn't hip or cool. But if we're honest, it sure is relatable. It's a book full of broken people making mistakes. It's filled with failure, heartache, loneliness and this painful yearning for freedom and redemption. It's really, truly authentic.
I just finished reading through I Samuel. Every church-goer knows the story of David, this little shepherd boy, youngest of Jesse's sons. He's the forgotten kid, the nobody. He stays all day in the fields with the sheep. He's the lonely one. He's the broken one. And God sends Samuel to this house to anoint a king for Israel. Jesse sends each son out one by one. He starts with the oldest, maybe the cool one who has it all together. He wanders out in his skinny jeans with a big smile. He knows what to say and do. But God tells Samuel no. So Jesse brings out the next son, then the next, then the next. And finally there was David, God's chosen. He wasn't man's chosen. Samuel takes one look at the eldest, Eliab, and is sure that he is the one. He looks right, he sounds right. He was man's chosen.
But God chose something different. God chose a ragamuffin.
The verse that jumped out at me the most in the entire book was I Samuel 22:2. David is being pursued by Saul at this point. He flees to a cave. He knows he has been anointed as God's chosen king, yet here he is running for his life and hiding out in a cave. He needs an army. He needs help. If it's me at this point, I'm praying God sends the finest warriors in the land, those who are strong and wealthy, who can do the most to help me.
22 David left Gath and escaped to the cave of Adullam. When his brothers and his father’s household heard about it, they went down to him there. 2 All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their commander. About four hundred men were with him.
He sends more ragamuffins. A whole army of ragamuffins and their ragamuffin king.
When I was younger, it used to bug me that of all the people in scripture God called David a man after His own heart. David had a messy life. He committed adultery and then had the woman's husband murdered when she turned up pregnant. He was sinful and imperfect. But God loved him, truly and deeply. God loved David.
It doesn't bug me so much anymore because I've realized my life is messy too, and if He loved David so deeply, He can love me. And maybe, just maybe, the message of the Ragamuffin Gospel is true: That God loves us no matter what. He didn't hold up perfection as 'a man after His own heart' because none of us could have lived up to that. But if He can love this ragamuffin king so deeply and so fiercely, then He can love us just as much.
I don't have to read my Bible and pray and go to church to earn God's love. It's freely given. How much of a difference would it make in our churches if we did those things, not to earn His love, but because of His love? I think if we all truly understood how deeply God feels for us, we would chase after him with reckless abandon, simply because of the way He feels for us.
Have you ever worked harder because you knew someone was proud of you? Have you ever done more for someone because you knew they loved you? What if instead of our walk with God being an obligation because He said we must, because there are rules and we want to go to heaven, what if it was a response? What if we were simply responding to a God who's love for us was immense and infinite? What if we saw Him looking down on us, proud that we are His children? What if we understood that when we sin He isn't angry because we failed, He weeps because we are distancing ourselves from Him, and He wants nothing more than to be near to us? He doesn't want mindless drones who obey because they'll be punished if they don't, He wants broken and imperfect people who just say 'Yes, I'll accept your love, though it's overwhelming and I don't deserve it'.
He wants ragamuffins.
So thank you sincerely to every ragamuffin whom God has brought through my life. You have done more for me in your brokenness then anyone could ever do in their perfection. Thank you for every wound you've let me see, for every tear I've watched you shed, for every stain that blots your past that you didn't hide from me, for every heartache you've openly endured before me, for every sin I've heard you confess, for every skeleton you've pulled out of your closet. You're brave. You're strong. You're fiercely loved by God. You are a man after His own heart. You are a ragamuffin, and I hope I can be like you.
