Today’s post comes with great cost.  Not a cost to me, but to others who have sacrificed much- much more than most would give.

Although the book is in the early phases, I’m super excited about my newest project.  

One night I woke up with a dream and quickly reached for a notepad to scribble it all down as fast as I could.  As the plot of my fifth book, a fiction novel, I was racing against the clock to get it written down before my groggy head forgot what I had just witnessed in the dream world.  It was good, very good, possibly too good to be the idea of my own subconcious. I figured such a concept must have been from the Lord above who watches us and instructs us while we sleep.  I thanked him, praying I’d be able to do his message well.

Ever since I’ve been researching to make the project happen.  The setting of the story, at least in part, is based in Iraq during the Iraq war.  The more I researched the more I was intrigued. I’m not the most current and up to date person when it comes to world events (I don’t have the ability to watch the news on television at home), but I didn’t think that I was this far removed from a part of history that I myself had lived through.  For those of us who were alive during the conflict in Iraq beginning in 2003, let me ask the same question. . . 

“How much do we know about the war that our own American troops and the troops of other nations as well were involved with?”

Researching, I was shocked.  

I was able to track down two soldiers from the Iraq war that were willing to talk with me.  Through several interview sessions, the more I found out, the more I felt humbled.  The two men that I interviewed were willing to tell me things that I’m sure were hard to say.  The struggles of being away in a really rough part of the world.  The mental fatigue that occurs when you see too much and don’t know what to do with it.  The blast of the desert heat.  The insecurity of being in a warzone in which you couldn’t tell who the enemy was.  The heartache of losing friends right in front of your eyes.  

My heart grew softer and softer with more and more information.  Listening to stories, I could hardly believe the things that our soldiers did for those who were back here at home, people like you and me who didn’t even know what was going on.  The sacrifice that our troops made, what they gave, what they endured, much of it was done in secret.  The general public has no clue to what these men and women did.  We still don’t.  I listened to a soldier this week tell me that ninety percent of the public has no clue what went on.  Yet men and women did it anyway.  They risked everything.  

Makes you wonder, huh?

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”- Romans 5:6-8 ESV

            With the knowledge that many of the people he would die for would never know or come to accept what he did, Jesus died for them anyway.

            That is mindboggling.

            Today, in the secret of your own heart, I challenge you to reflect.  The love that Christ had for you and I, the secret ambition that he came to save a people who would spit in his face and mock what he did, is this a love that you have come to know in a personal way? Reflecting on what our troops did for us during the Iraq war makes me terribly humbled.  They were fighting, sacrificing, doing their duty for those who didn’t know or realize what they were doing.  They did it anyway.  And now I am catching a glimpse of what they did for me.

Christ, in the same way, came to save you.  He did it before you were born, before you had the chance to accept or deny him, before you had the chance to think and process what he did.  It is a love that is so pure and so perfect, so selfless, that he paid the ultimate price for you and me regardless on anything we would ever do back for him.

That, is real love.

If you are someone who doesn’t know a love like this, I plead with you to find a way to get quiet with the Lord and talk with him about what he did for you.  Find someone who can help you find Christ.  Don’t sit silent.  Don’t let a chance like this slip away.  If nobody else is around you to lead you to a savior who loves you enough to pay the price for your sin before you even knew about it, please email me or leave a comment. I would be honored to help and pray with you.

Christ is the ultimate example of love.  There is no service such as this.

Thank him for that love today.

By Chuck Carr