i've tasted and i've seen

i am super excited to be writing this! this is a new idea that i had for our start back, i would invite guests on to either write what they would want to share or i would hop on a call and talk with them about how each of the different fruit of the spirit has transformed their life. for the month of love i couldn’t think of anyone better than one of my new good friends, Jaime Garcia. if you don’t know him, he’s a beast and truly has a heart set on fire for the Lord. since getting to know Jaime and hear a little about his story and how God changed his life i felt he would be able to give great insight on the transforming power of God’s love.

Jaime was born in Mexico and was a professional pitcher in the MLB for 10 years and it’s where he came to know Jesus. through seeing other people’s integrity in their walk with the Lord, Jaime became curious about who this Jesus guy was. growing up Jaime dealt with a lot of physical and emotional pain, depression and anxiety, struggling to find his worth in where he belonged. always trying to earn the love of his earthly father and show people how deserving of love he was.

striving for love, for validation is a big part of our society nowadays. people are so concerned with how they fit into certain crowds and what can get people to like them, that we often project this same ideation onto God. we think we have to perform for God to love us, and if we fail in our performance then we see ourselves as a failure in God’s eyes. we struggle so much with trying to show God why we deserve to be loved when He loved us first.

there is no striving for His love, it is freely given. so, it must be freely received.

            freely receiving love is not an easy thing to do, it almost seems unnatural. we are always in this work work work mode in life because that is how we earn material things. we have to work for them. if you want good grades you have to put in the time and work for it. if you want a successful career you have to show up and work for it. but God’s love is not some material item. God is not of this world. God wants us to show up and be in His presence, and through this showing up is where God will begin to refine our heart. to shift our heart and our mind from this performance driven love to a freely given love.

            I asked Jaime, ‘how has the love of God transformed your relationship with Him?’ and part of his response was so beautiful, and something that i had never really thought about. you know i knew that God was love but i never really dove into the love of God. Jaime said ‘love is who i have become.’ when we get to know the Father and i mean really know him, not just hear about Him, but truly see Him, face to face is where we become wrecked with His overpowering love. Jaime was talking about all the different things God has done out of love for us; ‘He created this world out of love, He created you and me in His image out of love, He sent His only begotten son to die for us so that we may know Him and have relationship with Him out of love.’

            it was really cool how this conversation just flowed so perfectly and how God really orchestrated this conversation. it felt like everything i had to ask Jaime, he almost led me into it with how he answered the previous question. he had just finished talking about how everything that he does is because of the way God loves him. so, i asked ‘how do you share God’s love, like what does it look like to do this?’ and the way he answered was so different than anything i was expecting. i was thinking he would maybe talk about how he likes to serve others, or having conversations and being kind to his teammates, to his friends or something along those lines. instead, he just said ‘by abiding’. ‘we are not talking about learning how to love, i’m going to learn to abide.’ to abide means to dwell, to rest in, and that is something that God invites us into. God says in John 15:4 ‘abide in Me, and I in you.’ so, if we are abiding in God, if we are resting in God’s presence that means that He is in us, and if He is in us then that would mean that we are love. Jaime said,

‘once we are abiding, we no longer try to prepare how to love others, it just flows out of us in everything that we do and people see that.’

and that really blew me away. just wow. i think that takes it back to the striving point too, you know there is no striving to love others, once we abide the love of God flows out from us because we are filled with Him.

            not striving for something we want is super hard! and as Christian’s what more could we want than God’s love? when i asked Jaime ‘how do you get to the point of accepting God’s love for you and receiving it and walking out in it?’ he answered with Psalm 46:10 ‘be still and know that I am God.’ in the still, in His comfort place, is where we see His face. in the stillness is where we come to know Him, not just know about Him, but truly know Him. isn’t this beautiful, Jaime says here that ‘once you’re able to see Him face to face, and get to know Him, you get to know yourself. otherwise, you’ll never get to know Him, and you won’t be able to receive His love and see you the way He sees you.’ as His beloved. He wants us to come to know Him so He can show us all that we are meant to be and to find our identity in Him. because when we tie our identity to our performance, shame, and fear will begin to become the driving forces of how we live our lives. but when we can align our inner voice with the truth that God sets before us, we know that we are loved, and we are worthy of belonging no matter our performances.

            if we tie our identity to our performance then it makes our relationship with God a real struggle. it’s something that i’ve struggled with, and so i wanted to know from Jaime when he has these struggles ‘what does he do to come back to God’s love?’ he had brought up David earlier in our chat and was talking about being a man after God’s own heart. he answered me and said, ‘by seeking Him daily.’ and this sounds like an obvious answer, but it is a lot easier said than done. when you haven’t got what you have been praying for and it’s been a while and things just don’t seem to be going right it starts getting hard to seek after Him daily. i love that Jaime brought this up, he said, ‘but like David, once i’ve tasted and i’ve seen there is no going back because now you’ll be able to discern when you have drifted away for a moment you now have the point of reference to get back to of abiding in Him because you have experienced what it is like to have tasted and to have seen.’

‘being transformed by God’s love means walking in complete freedom.’

i’ve tasted and i’ve seen that the Lord is good

-n0tbyjaime & n0tbychance