I'm confident in this, We can press extremely hard on the gospel and it will hold. You can ask deep questions. Questions that don't bottom. You can walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear all evil and it will still hold. You can run, hide and ignore... and it will still be there, holding for when you're ready to press into it again.
You can sit in a mud hut in the middle of Africa with heart run through a cheese shredder and question the existence of a God that you thought you once knew and it will hold.
You can pace hospital halls and walk the valley of the shadow of death waiting for last breaths from one and experiencing deeply a cut and hurt that cannot bare weight with words and it will hold.
You can roll out of bed in the morning with hopelessness as your anthem from perfect opportunities failed and it will hold.
You can smoke weed and it will hold.
You can sit in doctors offices and be told you will never birth a child and it will hold.
You can go bankrupt on complete sin and it will hold.
You can plead guilty of murder, theft or whatever you think it the most awful of awfuls, and it will hold.
You can quit going to church, plain and simple, and it will hold.
It will not bend. It will not sink. It will not dip. It will not change. It can hold the hard pressing. And then some.
It can hold the crawling through valley-highs plagued with hurt of all creations, questioning whatever and it won't stop. Run into it one by one over and over and it won't waver, move or budge. It holds.
It's still holding up and it's not counting you out.
I've spent quiet some time in church circles and it was a blank hush hush about pressing deeply into our darkest disasters for grace to flow up. I can't remember ever hearing someone say to press hard, because it will hold.
Might I be the first to send you an open and endless invitation to come and abandon, question, doubt and sort the confusing among the valley of the shadow of death, hopelessness, sin, your awful of awfuls here at His feet.
If not one person on planet earth explains that Jesus never once sent away a seeker, then how much more are we to run when we assume the bottom to fall out.
To a watching world how silly am I to not press with all my everything and show that it will hold. To a watching world why would a seeker seek on when the ones who proclaim their entire life secure upon this gospel's hold won't even press to an endless bottom themselves and see its hold.
He is prepared and able to hold your press. Your deepest won't bottom out, He goes deeper. He can keep up. Your deepest pressing into this reality and your disbelief of His existence does not make Him flee your side. Never once has Jesus sent the seeker off to sort and overcome the disasters of life alone. His sacrifice was for our pressing deeply into his security.
It's the safest of safes. The gospel. It is good to press deeply into it. It holds. It's the one thing for certain of all certainties I know will hold. It can bare the weight of all your yes and nos and I don't knows. Confusion. Doubts. Theological Messiness. Fear filled. Hurt. Disaster. Hopelessness. Valley-Highs.
All the problems and things you should never say because the church taught you else-wise. It won't bottom out when you do. It won't fail, it will hold. It will remain. Press deeply.
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