The Long Road Back

"Breathe Into Me"
RED

and this is how it feels when i ignore the words you spoke to me
and this is where i lose myself when i keep running away from you
and this is who i am when, when i don't know myself anymore
and this is what i choose when it's all left up to me

breathe your life into me
i can feel you
i'm falling, falling faster
breathe your life into me
i still need you
i'm falling, falling
breathe into me
breathe into me

and this is how it looks when i am standing on the edge
and this is how i break apart when i finally hit the ground
and this is how it hurts when i pretend i don't feel any pain
and this is how i disappear when i throw myself away

breathe your life into me
i can feel you
i'm falling, falling faster
breathe your life into me
i still need you
i'm falling, falling
breathe into me
breathe into me
breathe into me
breathe into me

breathe your life into me
i can feel you
i'm falling, falling faster
breathe your life into me
i still need you
i'm falling, falling
breathe into me

breathe your life into me!
i'm falling, falling faster
breathe your life into me!
falling, falling, falling
breathe into me
breathe into me
breathe into me
breathe into me

This video speaks to me every time I watch. The imagery is priceless. The reason it has a place in my heart is because I have been the one on the bed. Now, I know that the first thing that many of you reading are thinking is this, “Yes, I too have been the one on the bed. Before I knew Christ, things were full of shadows and pain, just like this video.” This statement would be true for all of us at that moment that we all came to know Christ, but let me ask a question. What if you feel like you are on the bed, and you have already accepted Christ into you life? Again, that is why the video touches my heart the way it does.

There was a time in my Christian walk where I began to not just walk away from Christ, but I was sprinting with my whole heart. The circumstances in my life were so bad in my opinion, that if this is what life (and especially the Christian life) had….I didn’t want it anymore. The farther and faster I ran the colder and more hopeless my life became. I began to feel that there was no where to go and no one to turn to. I remember talking to someone very special to me at this time in my life. That person looked me straight in the eyes (I’m sure they could see the lack of hope pouring from my heart) and said, “You don’t hear that still small voice anymore do you? I’ll pray that you hear it again.” At that moment I was broken. The exhaustion of my long hard run finally caught up to me. My mind, heart, and soul gave up the sprint. But, I remember very clearly thinking to myself, “I can’t take that long road back! I’m too tired! I won’t make it! Jesus, I would come back to You but I don’t have it in me!” I turned around to weep over the distance that I had put between myself and my Lord only to find out that He was right there the entire time. I began to figure it out. The faster I ran away, the faster Christ ran toward me. Jesus kept pace.

You see, there are times in our lives where we feel no hope, peace, love, comfort, smiles, warmth, compassion, joy, (You could probably add some others, we've all been there) and wonder how we came to be in this cold and miserable place. We begin to think, that even if we could find our way back to Jesus, do we have the strength to make the journey. I still have my times in life when I begin to feel those same old feelings trying to creep back into my head. I begin to think that I am alone and don’t know what to do next, but I now hear a still small voice telling me, “Just turn around.” Christ promised us Himself that He would always be there. John 14:18 says, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” Isn’t that a beautiful picture? We will never be orphans. All we have to do is turn around and Christ will be there. The beauty of our Lord is that He never tries to force Himself upon us. He never tries to trip us and drag us kicking and screaming back to Him. He just keeps pace, always hoping that we will finally stop running and just turn around.

I have always heard(and tried to live by) the quote, “A journey of a million miles begins with one step.” Let me revise the quote just a little for our purposes, “A journey back to Christ begins with one step….and I think you're going to find that is all it's going to take.”