By: Tami Hagglund

In January of this year, my husband and I decided to be a part of a Redemption Group. Had you asked us at the time, we would have told you it was because of my struggles with obesity and he was coming to support me. I thought my problem was simple enough–issues with idolizing comfort and escape. Teach me how to stop, give me some good verses to memorize. Done. Fixed. Move on.

That wasn’t quite how it went. The leaders loved me too much to settle for pat answers. They weren’t there to teach me how to “fix” myself. One particular evening I thought, quite triumphantly, that God had done a huge work in me and I shared how. After a few intentional questions, it became painfully clear that I kept my heart closed off to God the Father because I viewed Him as the marionette behind my pain. People who abused me time and time again were just puppets in His hands and I saw God as capricious, distant, and as the Ultimate Abuser.

But God melted my heart of stone with his love and simultaneously burst through all of my carefully wrought defenses. God, who loves me with such passion that He murdered His Son to restore me to Himself, allowed me to see Him for who He really is–a God abounding in steadfast love–in stark contrast to who I had sinfully decided He must be. God called me to surrender everything I thought I knew about being a Christian and to cleave to Him.

This all sounds so simple, and had you asked me questions regarding such things, I would have gotten every answer right. Yet to know with one’s head and to live with a changed heart are not the same thing.

All these years as a Christian, I have, unknowingly, treated Jesus like a mere teacher and the Bible like an algebra book. I viewed mature Christians, those whom I look up to, as the “smart kids” getting an A in Christianity class and I was struggling by with C’s and an occasional B. I couldn’t figure out how to get there, and I kept trying to elicit some elaborate equation from the Bible, one into which I could apply my problems, get a solution, and get fixed. Worst of all, I treated other Christians merely as classmates who were supposed to help me learn the material.

But the Bible is not an algebra book, mature Christians are not those scoring the highest on tests, peers aren’t here to fix me, and Jesus certainly isn’t a mere teacher. The Bible is God’s story of redemption through Jesus, mature Christians are those surrendered to God in worship, peers allow me to live out redemptive life in community for God’s glory and for others to know Him, and Jesus is my redeemer who requires all of me surrendered to Him in worship of the Holy Trinity–Father, Son, and Spirit.

I praise God for my Redemption Group, for loving me enough to help squash my idols and strip me of my false identity. For the first time in my life, I can truly say I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, that the living God is my refuge (Psalm 34:8). These verses from Psalm 63:3 quicken my heart in a way I never knew before:

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.

Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.

So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.