settle HERE:

The Only Work Required of Us to Receive What Was Required of Him

by Tari Cox

There’s something special about finding a place to settle. Not just stay, but settle. When the moment of carrying finally ceases. When the anchor of your soul lands once and for all. The comprehension that the only work to be done is no work to be done.

The moment where breath, revelation, and the Lord’s unfathomable assurance that you are safe all collide.

The moment you realize the only deed to be fulfilled is to receive that which already has been afforded to you.

This is the love of Jesus Christ — a class of love that only He could offer.

So here goes the shape-shifting, unspoken tussle for many of us, in diverse moments, in multiple ways.

Whether it’s during the invitation to salvation — amid the bombarding, intimidating concern of how your imperfections will be perfected through Him.

Or the moment where grace awaits to be poured out after the sting of temptation won.

Or the rehearsal in the number of days it’s been since you’ve communed in the secret place with the Father.

The constant here in these moments and others similarly experienced is often this subtle thought: we must stay. Meaning, to our detriment, we think we must work under our own power. We think we must keep to ourselves. Meaning, we isolate from the help others can seek to lend us.

We think we must dig through our arsenal to find something, anything, to put ourselves back in position to be worthy again. Somehow in knowing the vastness of the finished work of the cross, we cannot fathom that there’s any way, any sheer possibility, that we could ever offer anything at all to fulfill what was necessary on our behalf.

May we lean deeper into the moments that try to intimidate us out of receiving His love.

May we find comfort in knowing that, beyond knowing the priceless love of Christ, He desires for us to find confidence in it. In the daily understanding of the fragility of our human nature, may we seek to apply His truth and the demand to apply His love, as much as the demand for righteousness.

May we know that there remains no work to be done but to receive what has already been done. The one requirement. Fulfilled in total. His name is Jesus.

The Scripture above does not negate that we are capable of producing righteous deeds in sight to please the Lord, but rather it points out that they are simply ineffective for our sustainment in Him. And based on this, we can conclude that God, too, knew that righteousness can be outlived by those who choose to live a life that honors Him, but not enough to save us in this life.

For one to receive such a gift, such an immeasurable amount of love, a person must humble themselves to the place of inefficiency, but not to one of no value or worth.

One must become aware that there can be both frustration and gratitude in knowing that we will never achieve right standing with Him, apart from receiving what was required of Him.

One must choose to take the Father at His word, in that there was a requirement that He saw not only fit but also necessary in design, accounting for everything that had yet to be or become.

And yet these moments of realization and revelation, too, can only be experienced by receiving every part of a loving Father, who longs to explain.

Who longs to share who He is, just as much as He longs for us to understand.

For those of us that belong to them, there is a constant need for reassurance that can only be provided by Him of this: the only work required for us is to receive what was required of Him.

Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

1 CORINTHIANS 13:12-13