Somebody PUH-LEEZ, pay my bill…

Posted by marcus

November 1, 2005

This is an excerpt from the book, “Velvet Elvis” by Rob Bell.

T’SHUVA

The remaking of this world is why Jesus’ first messages began with “T’shuva, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

The Hebrew word t’shuva means “to return.” Return to the people we were originally created to be. The people God is remaking us into.

God makes us in his image. We reflect the beauty and creativity and wonder of the God who made us. And Jesus calls us to return to our true selves. The pure, whole people God originally intended us to be, before we veered off course.

Somewhere in you is the you whom you were made to be.

We need you to be you.

We don’t need a second anybody. We need the first you.

The problem is that the image of God is deeply scarred in each of us, and we lose trust in God’s version of our story. It seems too good to be true. And so we go searching for identity. We achieve and we push and we perform and we shop and we work out and we accomplish great things, longing to repair the image. Longing to find an identity that feels right.

Longing to be comfortable in our own skin.

But the thing we are searching for is not somewhere else. It is right here. And we can only find it when we give up the search, when we surrender, when we trust. Trust that God is already putting us back together.

Trust that through dying to the old, the new can give birth.

Trust that Jesus can repair the scarred and broken image.

It is trusting that I am loved. That I always have been. That I always will be. I don’t have to do anything. I don’t have to prove anything or achieve anything or accomplish one more thing. That exactly as I am, I am totally accepted, forgiven, and there is nothing I could ever do to lose this acceptance.

God knew exactly what he was doing when he made you. There are no accidents. We need you to embrace your true identity, who you are in Christ, letting the new awareness transform your life.

That is what Jesus has in mind.

That is what brings heaven to earth.

I was having breakfast with my dad. We were finishing our meal when I noticed that the waitress brought our check and then took is away and then brought it back again. She placed it on the table, smiled, and said, “Somebody in the restaurant paid for your meal. You’re all set.” And then she walked away.

I had the strangest feeling sitting there. The feeling was helplessness. There was nothing I could do. It had been taken care of. To insist on paying would have been pointless. All I could do was trust that what she said was true was actually true and then live in that. Which meant getting up and leaving the restaurant. My acceptance of what she said gave me a choice: to live like it was true or to create my own reality in which the bill was not paid.

This is our invitation. To trust that we don’t owe anything. to trust that something is already true about us, something has already been done, something has been there all along.

To trust that grace pays the the bill.

———–
Rob Bell is the Pastor of Mars Hill Community Church, and producer of the thought provoking video series NOOMA.

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