Recently I found myself face-to-face with an area of sin in my life. It’s the same one that I always come back to, over and over again. The story of my life, in some ways.
How sick of it I am! I can shout out in unison with Paul in Romans 7:19, ‘For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.’ Of course, I have been set free to some degree through the years of dialogue with God and prayer and simply my own will. But there is always this propensity to return to the same area of weakness. It sickens me.
I spent a week in utter condemnation after once again succumbing to the same old, same old. I spent hours in prayer, begging God for forgiveness, figuratively beating myself over the head, and trying to make deals with God to withhold the judgement on me for my sins. I had no joy and no peace, whatsoever.
And my desire to spend time with God completely disappeared. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to be near him. But at the same time I was desperate for his presence. My spirit was starving.
And finally, I came to the bottom of myself. And in that place, I was at last able to stop talking and start listening to God.
During worship one morning in staff retreat last week, I had a vision.
In my vision, I met with God (the Father). I walked up to him. I was feeling desperate and struggled to maintain eye contact. I put my nails into my chest and ripped it open, exposing my heart. I screamed at God, ‘take it out! Take this out of me! I cannot stand it inside me any longer!’ But there was silence. And he didn’t move. So I said, ‘If you won’t take it out, then I must. I cannot leave this inside me any longer.’ I started to pull as hard as I could on the ‘sin’ inside me, which looked like a root entangled around and into my heart. I struggled until I gave up, exhausted. And the Father God stepped forward and said to me, ‘you cannot (you will never be able to) save yourself.’ And that was the end.
I realized in that tiny moment, how much I am still trying to earn my way into God’s heart. My value to him, in my own eyes, is so caught up in what I do.
And God simply wants me to know his love and acceptance, regardless of my actions.
Not that he condones bad behaviour. His desire is that I am shaped to be more and more like Jesus. But in the meantime, I am desperately loved, right now, as I am.
I still cannot grasp it...
But I have a new understanding of God’s mercy. And of the effect of sin, which is not something to flirt with or to take lightly.
I thank God for his mercy on me, that while I am yet a sinner, he loves me and gave his Son for me and brought me into a place of relationship that I can never earn or deserve.
Romans 5:6 - 11
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
