​The boy knew he might be late for school but he couldn’t help himself. The sight of four black puppies in the pet store window stopped him dead in his tracks. It was only a matter of minutes after the dismissal bell rang that the boy was back at the window making sure all the puppies were still there. He then ran home as fast as he could.

“Mom, can I get a puppy?” The boy’s mother was skeptical. When he assured her that he would not only pay for the puppy himself but would care for it she relented.

The boy collected his savings and dashed out the door.

He counted the puppies in the window before going inside the store.  The pet store owner then took him back to the window to make his selection. The boy’s decision had already been made. “I want that one,” he said as he pointed to the smallest puppy in the corner.

“Oh, you don’t want that one,” the store owner replied. “He’s crippled. He’s got a problem with one of his legs. He can’t run and play like the other puppies. Choose another one.”

The boy lifted his pant leg exposing a metal leg brace. “No,” the boy insisted. “I think I’ll take the one in the corner.”

One of the most helpful things we can do when when our hearts are hurting is seek the companionship of someone who knows our struggle. God has a knack for bringing “kindred spirits” into our lives to help us to process our pain and restore our hope.

I feel a special connection to people with father wounds. A shared history makes me tender toward those deprived of a dad’s love. I have found healing through those whose stories parallel mine. 

When our daughter was struggling to weather the emotional devastation of two unsuccessful pregnancies, it wasn't her mother or father or pastor or doctor who brought her calm and offered her hope. It was women--young and old, some of whom she didn't even know--who felt what she was feeling. They knew first-hand the heartache, shame, and loneliness of miscarriage. And they made it through.

Where do cancer patients find the most hope? From cancer survivors. Who offers more support  to a person caught in the web of alcoholism than one who has been set free from the same snare?

More times than not, the person who lends the most comfort, understanding, and compassion when we're faced a gut-wrenching trial--whether it be depression, addiction, the loss of a job, or the loss of marriage--is someone who has walked that same road.

God shines brightest through people who have encountered suffering and have not only survived, but have come out of their ordeals with supernatural strength, greater love, and deeper faith.  

The truth is, when our storms subside, we often don't remember their severity or the even the depth of our struggle. But we never forget who was with us.  

There is incredible power in the words, Me, too. 

Most of us know how it feels when we’ve made that last payment on something—whether it’s a car, a credit card, a student loan, a house. It is so freeing, isn't it, to finally be done with a debt?

But what if, out of sheer habit, we just kept making payments? What if we continued to write checks every month to old creditors even though our debt had already been taken care of? That's just crazy, isn't it?

Yet that is exactly what many of us do with our spiritual account with God. We keep trying to pay on our debt to Him even though He has already stamped it PAID IN FULL.

We often operate as if Jesus made a partial payment on our sin debt and that the balance is up to us. It's as if His grace wasn't quite enough to get the job done in putting us in right standing with God. We convince ourselves that we must rely on our works to fill the gap.

So rather than placing our trust fully in Christ to cleanse and redeem us we attempt to pay God back for the bad things we've done by doing even more good things. We set out to prove ourselves worthy of His forgiveness and grace with good and noble accomplishments. But, in doing so, we miss the main point of grace. We are not saved from our sins because of our goodness. We are saved because of God's goodness.

Our gracious God, solely out of His great love for us, sent His Son to the world to pay the price for our sins. Our debt was fully covered at the cross.

The last utterance of Jesus at Calvary was the gasp, "It is finished" (John 19:30).  The Greek word used by the Apostle John in his account of the crucifixion of Christ is tetelestai--a word is found nowhere else in the Bible. It means fully completed, paid up in full, no longer having any outstanding debt. In that culture, the word was often written on business documents indicating that a bill had been paid. John's Greek readership would have made that connection immediately. There was no mistaking John's message: Christ died to pay for their sins. Fully. Completely. 

If we find ourselves--out of guilt or obligation--still trying to cover the cost of our sins we need to let this incredible truth set in: Jesus paid the price so we wouldn’t have to. The Bible says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 6:23, NLT).
​
Did you get that? Grace is a "free gift." It can never be earned. We can't possibly do enough good things in our lives to repay God. But, thanks be to God, we don't have to. Jesus paid it all. We can put our checkbooks away. Our account was closed at the cross. 

I am not a fan of Dancing With the Stars. I guess I’m not that interested because I’m not much of a dancer. I’m convinced it’s genetic. It's a Dutch thing that goes way back. It has nothing to do with dancing being sinful. It was just too hard to do with wooden shoes.

But I will say I was at least willing to give dancing a try. A few years ago some friends of ours asked my wife and me to take a dancing class with them. For something like eight weeks we took dancing lessons. Notice I didn't say, we learned how to dance. I said, we took dancing lessons.

The reality is, those eight weeks of lessons would have been enough, we could have learned how to dance if we then regularly went dancing. But going clubbing just isn’t a top priority for us. So any dance moves that we may have picked up during those eight weeks were soon completely forgotten.

Like any other skill, learning how to dance takes discipline. It’s more than just receiving instruction. You’ve got to practice faithfully if it’s going to sink in.

When Jesus walked this earth He was once asked which, of all the six hundred plus commandments that were on the books at the time, did He consider to be the most important. Jesus didn't hesitate. He gave a simple, yet straightforward three-part answer: Love God. Love others. Love yourself.

If we’ve grown up in the church we’ve more than likely received all kinds of instruction on how we are to love. We’ve heard it preached and  taught, we’ve sung hymns and choruses about it, we may have even memorized Scripture verses about love. But if we don’t practice it and practice it faithfully, all that instruction means nothing.

We live in a time where people are desperate for love. Without meaning to sound like a 60's flower child, What the world needs now is love, sweet love--no, not just for some, but for everyone. 

Imagine a world in which people's primary theme was love. If, rather than being driven by success or greed or power, our words, thoughts, and actions reflected our love for God, others, and ourselves.

I'm guessing our cities and towns would feature more churches and fewer courts; more parades and fewer protests. Our country would spend more time building bridges and less time building walls. Our families would look more like the Cleavers and less like the Kardashians.

Granted, our personal decision to practice Christ-like love may not change the world. But it will change our world. When we set out to love God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our strength, our relationship with Him will flourish beyond our wildest dreams. If we consciously choose to love others--even when they're not very loving toward us--it will bring immeasurable peace, joy, and contentment to our lives, not to mention showing them how it's supposed to be done. And when we see ourselves the way God sees us--as His precious, highly-valued, deeply loved children who He thinks the world of--we will have a renewed sense of purpose, acceptance, and self-respect.

It did me no good to learn how to dance if I never dance. It does us no good to learn how to love if we never love.