T'shuva

Ideas and blips from Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis

The word t'shuva is a Hebrew word meaning 'to return.'

To what? To return to the people we were originally created to be. (My roommate refers to this as our Eve state...for men, I suppose, their Adam state.) The way God created us to be and now the people God is remaking us into.

Somewhere in me is the person who I was made to be.

But who God made me or you to be usually sounds just too good to be true. 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.

Trust that Jesus can repair the scarred and broken image.

It is trusting that you are loved. That you always have been. That you always will be. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to prove anything or achieve anything or accomplish one more thing. That exactly as you are, you are totally accepted, forgiven, and there is nothign you could ever do to lose this acceptance.

Romans 8:37-39 (NIV)

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,n will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God knew exactly what he was doing when he made you. There are no accidents.

Embrace your true identity, who you are in Christ, letting this new awareness transform your life.

Rob Bell speaks of eating at a restaurant, and when he is finished, the waitress tells him someone has already picked up his check and paid for his meal. There is nothing for him to do but get up and leave. He can't try to pay the bill again; it's already been paid. He must trust that what he owed was taken care of.

There is an invitation to you: to trust that you don't owe anything. To trust that something is already true about you, something has already been done, something has been there all along. To trust that grace pays the bill.