sin – Sheila Dougal

Sunday summary

Every Sunday when I get to go to church I leave with something from God’s word pressing on me. Every time. But I don’t always sit down and spend some time chewing on what struck me. Being involved in a community group helps cause every Thursday our group talks about how the sermon impacted each of us. I don’t want to wait till Thursday.

Today we heard from Psalm 32. I’ve read this Psalm before but this time around I discovered treasure that’s been right there all along.

If I had to summarize the Psalm in a 140 character or less tweet it would be:

“Godly people sin, run to Christ, confess it and rejoice in his forgiveness. The time between sin and confession crushes. – Click to TWEET

Listening to my pastor Jason preach the truth out of Psalm 32 had me marveling at how we miss the gospel of Jesus Christ with our attempts at covering our own sin. I shouldn’t say “we”. I do that. My human, broken heart and mind keep trying to avoid the reality of my sin. And not just mine, I want to avoid the reality of other people’s sin too. I don’t want to take up my cross and follow Jesus and suffer because of other people’s sins! I mean, my natural self doesn’t want to. But Jesus is in me. And he’s moving in me to will and to act like him. God-like. Godly. I’m one of his “godly” ones. I had a hard time typing that. But it’s true. I’m one of his godly ones, not because I don’t sin, but because I do and I run to Jesus with it and call it what he calls it. And when other people sin, I don’t hold it against them. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in justice or laws. It just means I don’t make myself their personal judge. I don’t compare my sin to their sin and condemn them according to my self-made version of righteousness. And when I do, I feel the conviction of being unforgiving and I run to Jesus and confess it.

And that space between sinning and running to Christ to confess it is crushing! The longer I wait and the more I try to hide and cover what I know is sin, the more I feel the crushing weight of the guilt and shame Christ bore for me. I can’t bear that. And I can’t hide from it. The only way to escape is through the covering of Christ. He bore my guilt and shame in his body so that I could bear his righteousness and joy in mine! What love!

This is what the Psalm says godly people do. It doesn’t say they don’t drink and don’t smoke and don’t go with girls who do. It doesn’t say they read their Bible a minimum of so many hours a day and wake up before dawn for “quiet time” with God. Godly people run to Christ as the covering for their sin rather than trying to cover it themselves.

My pastor summed it up so well when he said, “We’re not meant to hide our sins from God. We’re meant to hide ourselves in God.”

The wonder of what the God of the Bible has done for those who love Christ is what makes me run to him.

1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,

whose sin is covered.

2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,

and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

3 For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away

through my groaning all day long.

4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;

my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

Selah

5 I acknowledged my sin to you,

and I did not cover my iniquity;

I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”

and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

Selah

6 Therefore let everyone who is godly

offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;

surely in the rush of great waters,

they shall not reach him.

7 You are a hiding place for me;

you preserve me from trouble;

you surround me with shouts of deliverance.

-Psalm 32:1-7

how Christians can be like any other spiritual person and how they can stand out different

James and I spent most of yesterday and this morning in historic Jerome, Arizona. We stayed at the Surgeon’s House, a bed and breakfast run by a very sweet lady named Andrea.

The 100 year old Surgeon’s house used to be the headquarters for nurses working for the local hospital before it was used as home of the chief surgeon at the hospital in the 1930’s. The house and town have quite the history. I’ve never stayed at a bed and breakfast so I have nothing to compare it to, but this is most definitely the best experience I have ever had in staying at a hotel or resort. You don’t go to the Surgeon’s house to stay overnight. You go to retreat into quiet rooms and gardens full of comfy seats, art, books, plants, Koi fish, the sound of water falling, and the views of the entire valley and red-rock features on the horizon. You go to walk the switchback, uphill streets of Jerome, visit quaint shops and historic sites (which are everywhere) and come back to a quiet home with open doors and the aroma of freshly baked goodies waiting for you. It was honestly the best experience I’ve ever had for a getaway. Which I’ve only done once or twice in the last 24 years, and never without kids.

Being there, and speaking with Andrea- who I took to be an odd but very nice spiritualist/mystic 60 something woman at her mention of being blessed by “Mother Earth” and her reference to her past life as a mermaid (she wasn’t joking), energy fields, “Darma” and the tattoo of a moon and star on her forehead as well as the Nag Champa incense burning in the dining room- stirred up some thinking about my life as a Christian and as a wife.

Andrea was a perfect hostess. She was hospitable, warm, accommodating and an amazing cook! You really couldn’t ask for much better. The only thing I didn’t like was the smell of the Nag Champa. But any who, as we were leaving today I was thinking about how nice this lady was who obviously did not worship Christ. I thought about how people loved going to her place and how kind she was. How was she different than a what Christ calls us to be?

I’m not talking about doctrine (obviously Mother Earth and her past life as a mermaid don’t line up with our Triune God and the hope of resurrection we have because of Christ and his atoning work on the cross). I’m talking about how she deals with people’s sin… even her own. This nice woman is going about her business in a very high-quality way. But the thought crossed my mind, “What does she do with people’s sin in her life? What is her response to the sin of others against her and the things about her she knows are shameful and wrong?” The difference between a nice woman like this who’s into spirituality and such, and a woman (or man) who has been captured by the love of Christ and is in the process of being conformed to his image is the way they respond to sin. Andrea had created quite the sanctuary for herself and the guests she chose to allow into her home at a price. But what did she do with sin?

We Christians could be like Andrea, and our claims about Christ wouldn’t seem to be anything more than another kind of spirituality. We can go about our lives, trying to create a comfortable place/space/life for ourselves and only allow in those we choose at a price (they have to make it worth it to let them in, i.e. make our lives easier/more comfortable/richer). But Christ in us wouldn’t be seen. His unique claims to being the Way, the Truth and the Life and the only way to know God and be in a peaceful, loving relationship with him would be muted by our “nice” lives. The only way we stand out in the world of “good” religion or “nice” spiritualism, even atheistic moralism, is by the way we respond to sin.

I tried explaining my thinking to my husband on the way home while we were discussing Andrea’s spirituality. I said, “The way Christianity tells of God is that God, who has everything and is in the highest place of honor, lowered himself to lift up others. Other religions and spiritualism has to isolate itself from others to seem nice and attractive. They don’t go get low into peoples lives and let the messes those people have fall on them and love them through it, bearing it and dealing with it in love.” I thought about how when you look at the world and the people who are going to the hard places and the poor places and the dangerous places, it’s mostly Christians. Not people like sweet Andrea. People like Andrea go to places like Sedona and Jerome and let people seek out their “enlightened” way of thinking. And we Christians can be just religious-right conservative versions of Andrea if we don’t put our Christianity rubber to the road of people’s messed up sinful lives.

We don’t have to go to Africa to do it either. Although we may. If we’re married we have a sinful person to take up our crosses and following Jesus in loving daily. How we deal with the sin in the lives of the ones we’ve vowed to stay with until death do us part is one area where we can let Christ in us be seen as something totally other, different… holy. Christ died bearing our sins. He calls us to take up our cross and follow him daily. Christians die daily to see others freed from slavery to sin.

The Christian doesn’t hide from sin. He runs to it. In love. To die bearing it. In the Spirit of Christ who paid for it. So many try to train, tolerate or ignore people’s sin. Christians run to people in their sin in the Spirit of the One who bore it.

So driving home, I thought about Andrea, and my Christian life, and looked at my world-weary husband, laden with a load of sin and shame as he drove us home. It’s not a nice marriage I’m running for here. It’s his freedom.

A slow-to-believe believer’s thoughts on Good Friday

It’s Good Friday.

There’s a tsunami of meaning in those three words.

Maybe for you it’s just TGIF.

I get it. Honestly, I grew up hearing the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but for years it made no connection with my soul. If I’m honest the celebration (if you can call it that) of Good Friday has been odd to me at best and often it’s been an offense. Tim Keller said something I heard the other day to the effect of, “The cross of Christ is offensive in all sorts of ways, and if you haven’t felt it, if you haven’t ever struggled with it, I don’t think you get it...” That has been the case with me. Until recent years, I haven’t really stopped to face the ugliness and offense at the center of the Christian message: that Christ was crucified for our sins.

Years of questioning from dear loved ones who don’t believe has caused me to look that horrific, bloody, crucified, historic Jesus I love in the face and wrestle with the offense of the Christian doctrine of substitutionary atonement (Christ dying in our place for our sins).

I am a believer. But I understand unbelief. Unbelievers I love have caused me to examine what it is I say I believe on holidays like Christmas and Easter and Good Friday. And I’m very glad they have. I’m a slow-to-believe believer in Christ. The wonder and horror of what Christ endured and did for me, specifically, and for all who would believe in him, is palpably meaningful to me now more than ever. But I’m thick-headed and slow to get it. I’m sure the meaning of Christ’s substitutionary death will increasingly become more real for me since it is infinitely full of truth and life. Increasingly, substitutionary atonement is no longer two big, seminary-graduate words only to be heard from a pulpit. Substitutionary atonement is the bloody door through which I enter an eternity of grace upon undeserved grace!

But I digress.

I want to try to explain at least a cupful of my thoughts regarding Good Friday as I stand under the Niagra Falls of Christ’s substitutionary death for those who believe in him.

There is much to capture in thinking on what it means that Christ died in my place and satisfied the just requirement of God for me so that I will never experience rejection from the God who made me to know him as Father and friend. As I say, It’s like trying to stand under Niagra Falls with a tiny tea cup to grab a drink of water. But here I go.

It’s Offensive Because We’re Evil

Good Friday is about how we have perverted the glory of God and how he makes his glory known rightly again.

The thought that people are basically good and if we just modify “bad” behaviors we would all be happy and the world would be a better place is lost on me. I’ve had a 2 year old. I’ve lied so I could look good to another liar. I’ve been abandoned and objectified as a woman. And I’ve watched the news and cared for people broken by the evil in others.

We modify “bad” behaviors not because we’re basically good, but because like Imagine Dragons said, “No matter what we breed, we still are made of greed.” If we’re honest, we know inside us is a drive to make ourselves the center of life at the expense of others. It’s an insidious evil that seems to lie dormant, but peeks out it’s ugly head and beats its little brother so it can have the ball, or abandons it’s family so it can have a better life… or a thousand other birthed-evils that come out of our hearts. We have laws, and behavior modification techniques and self-help books, and therapists and jails and multiple forms of restraint and training in our lives because we are trying to tame the beast. Not because we’re all angels at heart that trip up every now and then.

And all the horror that comes out of us is not just horrible because of what we do to each other. It’s horrible because we were not random, chance products of evolutionary process. If that’s all we are then there would be no reason to call anything we do right or wrong. It would be simply part of the process of evolution: survival of the fittest. But we know we do evil things and we recognize evil in others because we are made to do good. To be good. To be godly. To reflect the glory of God in our lives like living testimonies to the universe and each other. Our human lives are to be like works of art that display the beauty and wonder of the One who made us. The evil in us is so evil because is a perversion of the image of God in us.

When I look at the cross of Christ and the horrors of his crucifixion and think about the why behind it- Why would God do that to save us? I realize, at least in part, that the reason the cross of Christ is so offensive and horrific is because billions of people (including me) have perverted the glory of God with our lives and made God out to be a liar and a murderer and a self-centered leech with a message that says, “Your life for mine!” The cross of Christ is justice. It’s a making right the message that has been wrongly proclaimed from sinful humanity. The cross of Christ says God is worth my life. God is truth. God is just. God is life. God gives life. God’s message is, “My life for yours!” The cross of Christ is a historical entrance of God into humanity saying, “This is what you all have done to me. This is the bloody truth about the evil that is in you that perverts the truth about who I am and who you are. I am bloodied and broken and bruised by your evils. You were made to glorify me, but you have defamed me. And I bear it because I am God and I give my life for you!“

On the cross Christ is taking the truth that, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” in his own body. His bloody, broken flesh on that cross is the embodiment of our perversion of God’s glory. He became our sin.

I know that’s not all the cross of Christ says. But it’s a few drops. It’s enough to cause me to hate my sin and love my sin-bearing Savior.

All Real Love Is Substitutionary Sacrifice

Good Friday is about what love really is and what only God can do.

In that same talk, where I heard Tim Keller say that if we haven’t really struggled with the offense of the cross of Christ we probably don’t really get what it means, I also heard him say something that captured a few more drops of the cascades of truth pouring from the side of my pierced and broken Lord. He said, “All love. All real love is a substitutionary sacrifice. ‘My life for yours’. Heart of the universe...” It’s true. It’s a truth we can all recognize. We all know it when we see substitutionary sacrifice. When a parent gives up their agenda for the day to tend to a child in need. When a soldier dies to keep an enemy from taking freedom and life from another. When a firefighter rushes into a burning building to rescue a trapped man. All of these and so many other examples speak of the universal truth that real love is “My life for yours. I’ll die, I’ll sacrifice, I’ll serve to make your life better, easier, richer.” Evil is, “Your life for mine. How can you die, how can you sacrifice, how can you serve to make my life better, easier, richer?”

But even though we see this truth in our lives, none of our little displays of the true message substitutionary sacrificial love can save our fellow man from the righteous judgement of God on the evil we all carry around inside.

There’s a line in an ancient Hebrew Psalm in the Bible that says, “Truly no man can ransom another or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit.” (Psalm 49:7-9)

It’s the truth. We all display little imperfect examples of the universal truth of substitutionary sacrifice, but none of us can be an atoning substitute for another human being. The only person who could ever pay the costly ransom required to love an evil human being and give them a life that lives forever in friendship and intimate relationship with God is God. I might die a little so that my son can live more. But only the God-Man Christ Jesus can die so that my son can live forever!

So there’s my little tea cup of truth. It’s just a drop from a fountain that flows abundantly with truth and life. Christ died bearing the evil I have lived out which has perverted the truth about God. And Christ did this for me because only he can give God’s life for mine so that I might live forever!

Maybe this Good Friday you can sip and taste with me and see that the Jesus who died so horrifically for our sins this day in history about 2000 years ago, he is good.

There’s no time for this! {Warning: I’m yelling in this post. At myself mostly.}

You know what keeps you locked in a cage of doing what you know is wrong when there’s a clear way out? A total ignorance, a total unawareness, a total blindness, a total denial of the times.

When a person knows their about to die you know what they don’t do? They don’t say, “You know what, I’m gonna die tomorrow so today I’m going to cheat on my husband, destroy my marriage, break trust with everyone I know, defame the name of Christ that I carry around in the title “Christian”, abandon my kids, rob a bank, and do every other vile and deplorable thing I can think of that for a fleeting period of time might give me some sense of pleasure, or freedom or vengeance because tomorrow I’m going to die and that’s the way I want to spend the rest of my life. That’s what I want people to remember me for when I go. That’s what I want them to think of when they think of a Christian.“

No one says that!

But many do it.

And the only reason we do it is because we’re in total denial. We refuse to believe there’s no time for such things. We refuse to believe the end of all things is at hand. We refuse to believe we’re going to die and leave a reputation behind and face the One who made us, the One we’ve been naming ourselves after so easily.

Christian. Really? Are you really? Am I really? Am I a Christ-ian? A “little Christ”?

I am. I say I am. I carry around His name. And One day I’ll meet him face to face.

The end of all things is at hand. I do not get to stay here this side of that day forever. I only get a time. A very short time.

So many of us in the Disneyland of America are in a tangled web- abandoning our vows to each other, indulging in sexual pleasures outside of marriage, consuming images for our pleasure, ignoring the needs of those around us- we toy with sin and wrestle with whether God will forgive us if we chose to keep toying, and we argue with each other about various doctrines… and we’re fools! There’s no time!

There’s no time to caress our pity party about our less than ideal marriage and feast ourselves on the cocaine of a forbidden relationship. There’s no time!! We carry the name of Christ. We will see him face to face one day. We won’t just live this life forever apart from a day of reckoning. We don’t have time to toy with sin. We have wasted enough of our lives on those lies and traps and temporary pleasures (that are really chains)!

We only have a short time here to pray and watch the God of all the earth do amazing things through us! Us!

You know, I hear the call from godly men and women to stand for the unborn and those enslaved in human trafficking. I hear the call to be willing to stand out as “hateful” in a world that will hate you for loving them and unashamedly confessing that God designed marriage between a man and woman. I hear a call for embracing all races and ethnic groups as equally bearing the image of God, and for pointing to the blood of Christ as the only hope for any man. I hear the call to abandon comfort and ease to go to an unreached people group, bringing them the light and truth of Christ. I hear their calls and I think we’re over here wasting our lives on sinful pleasures and desires, arguing amongst ourselves about what the Bible says and our seconds and minutes and hours and days and years tick by and we trample under our feet the blood of Christ, clinging to our sin, mocking God and declaring we can continue in sin because grace abounds. All the while those who rightly call themselves Christians are spending their minutes and months and lives fighting to stand against the devil’s schemes, putting their own lives in the way of those marching to slaughter and giving up domestic life for a very uncomfortable life reaching people who’ve never heard of their Savior. And it’s not just those “glamorous” calls that Christians are spending their lives on. They’re bending their knees to raise up a child day in and day out with prayer and teaching and nurture in the Spirit of Christ They’re denying themselves to love a world-weary man who doesn’t love them well. They’re laying down their lives to tender-heartedly love a woman whose bitternesses are spreading.

So you’re not called to sell all your possessions and move to the Congo. But, when those thoughts come, “He’s never going to change… I don’t deserve to be treated like this… I’m not loved like I long to be loved… No one cares what I want, what I desire… What about me?…” When those poisoned-laced darts of sweet lies penetrate my brain I need to declare: THERE’S NO TIME FOR THIS!!

I need to take up the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God and destroy that lying worm with 1 Peter 4.

So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin. You won’t spend the rest of your lives chasing your own desires, but you will be anxious to do the will of God. You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols.

Of course, your former friends are surprised when you no longer plunge into the flood of wild and destructive things they do. So they slander you. But remember that they will have to face God, who stands ready to judge everyone, both the living and the dead. The end of the world is coming soon. Therefore, be earnest and disciplined in your prayers. Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins. Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or a place to stay. God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen. – 1 Peter 4:1-5,7-11

You and I need to let the pain of the battle to stand in Christ free us when our husbands don’t love us like they should, and our children require us to constantly give our time and energy and life, and our bosses fire us because of our expressed beliefs when asked, and our neighbor rejects us because of our refusal to celebrate same-sex unions, and our friends cut us off because we won’t pat them on the back and join in with encouraging them in the sin that is destroying their lives. When those things happen, you and I need to let those pains, those sufferings come so we can be one battle closer to being done with sinning! We need to let those trials come and hurt us so we can stop spending the rest of our lives chasing our own desires but rather wake up every day on edge to do the will of God! Instead of running away from the pain and suffering that comes with following Christ, we need to let it free us from the chains of sin and to a life abandoned to his will.

And if we find ourselves in the pit of the sinful mess we’ve made of our lives, right now, there is time to turn around, and stop denying the truth, and let the blood of Christ be enough for us to stop wasting our lives on our own desires and spend our lives on HIS! There’s no time for anything else!

Sobered,

Sheila

Advent meditation: It’s for freedom that he set us free

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. …For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. – Galatians 5:1,13

I’ve been thinking about this a lot today. I used to read these verses and sort of feel lost. “It’s for freedom Christ has set us free”??? Ok. What does that mean? I mean, yeah, I’d agree that Christ set us free from the condemnation coming against us, but free? Free from what? Doesn’t God restrict, not free? If Christ has set us free are we “free” to do whatever we want? And if we’re not, is that really freedom?

If I’m honest those questions have gone through my head many times over the years. But today, after pouring my heart out to one that I love, I heard those verses in my head and it made total sense! Sin is slavery. Christ’s blood bought freedom. Freedom from sin! He didn’t die to serve us our favorite, chosen sin on a silver platter. He died to give us the power to kill sin, to break free from it’s chains, to turn to him when we find ourselves in a sin. He didn’t come to leave the dead, dead and the sick, sick and the broken, broken. He came to give life to the dead, heal the sick and restore the broken.

Until we see him face to face we will be in a battle to fight sin with faith. We have been given the power to look the slave driver of sin in the face and say, “NO MORE! I will not give myself over to you!” And when we fail, and we will fail, we have been given the grace to cut off the arm that causes us to sin and turn our minds and hearts back to the One who died to set us free.

Freedom in Christ is freedom to no longer be poisoned by the lies of sin. It’s the freedom to be sober again, to see clearly the beauty of God in Christ and realize we’ve been feasting ourselves on vomit and rottenness and poison. When we have that freedom we recognize sin for what it is and we hate it and we fight it and we turn from it when we find ourselves in it. And we can do that now, because Christ has come and purchased with his own blood the ability for us to taste the goodness of God and despise the putridness of sin. He bore or sins in his body to free us to love God and love one another not to turn ourselves back over to the destructive things that he had to die to free us from in the first place!

So when I read these verses now I exclaim, “Yes! Yes! Yes he really has freed me.” Now I hate the thing I used to think he was unfairly keeping me from. I now know he’s freed me from the thing that was keeping me from really loving Him and really serving and loving others.

And because of all this, this Advent, I’m thinking a lot about my longing for the coming again of Christ. Until that day he’s freed me to fight the fight of faith. To stand. To change my thinking. To turn to him. And when he comes and I see him face to face, the fight will be over. Until then I cling to the promise that he came to set me free and I press on to fight the good fight of faith in who He is and what He teaches me to do.

Quieted,

Sheila

Road trip day #1

Today after church we began our annual road trip to “Oregon”… We always say that but really it’s initially a road trip to Redding, CA where my sister lives. Eventually we get to Oregon.

In the past, I’d wake the kids early in the morning, load them in the car, and we make it closer to Sacramento before stopping for the night. But since we didn’t get on the road till about noon, after church, I decided to stop for the night in Thousand Oaks, CA.

I like Thousand Oaks. Everything grows here! Only the Santa Monica Mountains separate us from the Pacific Ocean. I wanted to go to the beach tonight but I’m just toast. Working night shift Friday night and then getting up early this morning has my body pretty fatigued. I plan to go to the beach either in the morning with the boys or on the way back home to AZ on Thursday.

I love road trips! There’s just something about the open road. I guess I like the feeling that I’m going somewhere. Sometimes life feels like you’re going nowhere. When you’re on the road, you’re going somewhere.

I’m glad I stayed for church this morning. I needed to get my compass pointed the right direction before I hit the road. It’s hard to hear the preacher preach on a subject that is a specific point of sin in your own life. As I listened today, I wondered if this is how folks feel when they hear a sermon on divorce after they’ve gone through one- or more- themselves. It’s hard, but it’s good.

I’m confident not a single person who’s gone through a divorce would hear a sermon on what God has joined together let no one separate and be opposed to what they heard. They, in fact, would probably be the first to stand up and say, “Amen!” They know the pain themselves. They know the damage. They know God hates divorce. They know… they hate it too. The same goes for the woman, who married an unbelieving man, who listens to the pastor preach from Ezra 9 and 2 Corinthians 6. Amen! The damage is extensive. There is no fellowship. The heart is drawn away from God, and then, when won back (if won back), is faced with the heartache of being separate in what God designed to be joined together.

During the sermon my oldest son looked over at me with a, “You’re busted,” look on his face. He knows. He grieves. He feels the ripping apart that comes with living with unequally yoked parents. Even though I hate it for my kids, I pray that the mercy and grace of my good God will use the pain they experience now to prevent them from going down the same path and cause them to love God’s ways, which are good. All the time.

We’ll talk about it tonight before we go to sleep. Which is in about 30 minutes. Time to sign off.

Quieted,

Sheila

Of barely burning embers, a bruised heart and a Beautiful Savior

I came to the end of another journal today. I’ve kept a journal since I was 9, and I still have all my journals from age 13 on.

Looking back is hard. And some of the reason it’s hard is pride. It’s flat out embarrassing looking back at some of the things I thought, wrote and did. I look back and know for sure, my God is so merciful and patient and faithful to me, though I have been a liar, a thief, a gossip, sexually immoral, quick to trade Jesus in for a man who would make me feel good, and much more. I’ve been a coward and a complainer, but Christ has been to me the God-Man, drawing a line in the sand, lifting my head, withholding his right to condemn me, and making me want to go and sin no more!

I’m tired of fighting sin! I long for the day when my thoughts aren’t a battle from the moment I open my eyes and depression doesn’t suck me in like a black hole. But, by the grace of God, I’ll keep fighting the good fight of faith in Christ.

There are so many hurts from the past. Oh, that I would see with eyes of faith; that I would see God’s promises kept and Christ’s beauty forged in the fires of my life and the aroma of His goodness emanating from my brokenness. Yet, I find at 39, at the end of another journal (one that started as a determination to keep the promise of my youth in marriage and to pray for my husband), that I am a smoldering flame where I thought there was fire. I am a bruised reed when I thought I was a pillar.

And I lift my trembling hands and bend my weak knees and cry out tired prayers and rest all my hope on the One who doesn’t put out irritating smoky embers like me or crush cowardly broken reeds like the one I find I am after life’s trials thus far.

I wanted to be a “woman of valor”, but peering past the obviousness of the condition I find myself in, I see my Lord stirring a flame and splinting what’s broken, and a long way off, I catch a glimpse of what I long for: to see Him face to face, and to be made like him, finally fully redeemed.

So I press on. Looking back so I can recall His faithfulness despite my folly, but then forgetting what’s behind, because He’s given me today. And it’s a long obedience in the same direction with the promise that He who began a good work in me, will be faithful to complete it compelling me to put one foot in front of the other.

A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench; He will bring forth justice for truth. -Isaiah 42:3

Quieted,

Sheila

“There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes.” – C.S. Lewis

When I read Psalm 8, my mind goes to Lamentations 5.

What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. -Psalm 8:4-5

The joy of our hearts has ceased; our dancing has been turned to morning. The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned!… Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored! – Lamentations 5:15-16,21

We are Imago Dei. We human beings are created in the image of God. We are “gods” in the sense that we were created by God to rule his creation and were crowned with a glory and honor special to being creatures in God’s own image. Yet the crown has fallen from our heads. We have sinned. The nature of Imago Dei with which God made us is now twisted, distorted, perverted. And so we twist and distort and pervert the glory and honor He has made us to have. We need to be restored.

We made it to my sister’s in Redding late last night. I finished listening to The Last Battle as we made our way up from Monterey to Yuba City where we ate dinner at Subway with my childhood friend Lori. Lori and I met each other in first grade and have kept in touch and been friends ever since. That doesn’t happen very often. She and her little girl Lily are a joy! I think there should be a book titled Lori and Lily.

From the moment I woke up this morning until a couple hours ago I’ve been enjoying the cool weather, beautiful surroundings, and, most of all, watching my sons and nephews fish, craw dad hunt, ride bikes, laugh, wrestle, and play together.

Tomorrow my mom will join us here. It’s so good to see my sister and brother in law’s fervor for God’s word and God’s ways to be taught and lived and learned in their house, with their kids. Truly I’m getting to see the work of God I got to participate in all those years past praying. What a gift!!!

Quieted,

Sheila

The problem of evil

I was asked tonight why God doesn’t end the evil now, why wait? I was asked why pray to a God who is going to let evil continue? “Why pray He’s not going to change His mind, He’s going to do whatever He’s going to do anyway!”

I feel like I failed miserably in my attempts to answer. I pray somehow, in my weakness, God would show Himself strong and speak truth in the ears of the ones with understandable questions.

As I sat tonight after reading about Elijah, calling on God in a set-up to prove nothing is impossible with Him and that He alone is God, and after reading the prophecy that some day, the lion will lie with the lamb, and after reading Peter’s letter to answer the questions about why and how long- he said God is patient, not wanting anyone to perish, but wanting everyone to come to repentance. God is waiting for us. He is not slow in bringing about His promise to bring evil to an end, He is patient to draw us out first. After I read all this, and watched some of my questioners fall asleep as I read, feeling like my words were falling on sleeping ears, feeling like no awakening was getting in, I went out to the couch and watered the word I spoke with my tears.

And I called on God, the God who is God even over Connecticut. Even over sleeping ears and doubting hearts and questioning men. I cried:

Why shouldn’t I call on You Lord? Who should I call on? Should I call on no one? Shall I hide in my hobbies? Or TV? Or music? Or food? Or politics? Shall I stick my head in the sand and act as though nothing is happening? Shall I carry on numbly as though nothing is ever going to change? Shall I act as though I can save myself and live the good life while those around me fall victim to evil? Shall I call on politicians? Or philosophers? Shall I call on new laws or religious leaders? Shall I call on education or psychologists? Shall I call on philanthropists or musicians? Shall I call on neighbors to rally? Shall I become a hermit and flee from the troubles of the world? Shall I call on no one?

Who have I but you Lord? Even if nothing I think should change changes because I call on You, does that mean you don’t hear, or don’t care? Shall I not cry to you and ask you to change things and yet surrender to your goodness and sovereignty and acknowledge my brevity and fallenness?

Do I presume to know what you should do? Shall I not entrust myself to You who sees all things and knows all things and is working all things according to Your will? I choose to cry to You, not turn from You. I don’t understand. I can’t explain You. I can’t defend You. I can’t convince others of You. But I will call on You. Though evil seems to prevail, though the ones I love seem to doubt You, though I myself do not understand why Your will plays out this way, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation! I will run to the only One who saves! I will choose to believe Your promise to one day make all things new through Christ who is your answer to the problem of evil.

And so I go looking for others whose faith will stoke the smoldering reed of mine. I pick up If God is Good on my Kindle and start reading:

“The cross is God’s answer to the question ‘Why don’t you do something about evil?'”- Chapter 21 of If God is Good by Randy Alcorn.

“God may already be restraining 99.99 percent of evil and suffering… Given the evil of the human heart, you’d think that there would be thousands of Jack the Rippers in every city. Her statement stopped me in my tracks. Might God be limiting sin all around us, all the time? Second Thessalonians 2:7 declares that God is in fact restraining lawlessness in this world. For this we should thank Him daily.” – Chapter 30 of If God is Good by Randy Alcorn.

“Behind almost every expression of the problem of evil stands an assumption: we know what an omniscient, omnipotent, morally perfect being should do. But we lack omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection- so how could we know? We should rescue ourselves as judges. As finite and fallen individuals, we lack the necessary qualifications to assess what God should and should not do. Not only do we know very little, even what we think we know is often distorted.- Chapter 35 of If God is Good by Randy Alcorn

Quieted,

Sheila

Better than the bad guys

Sometimes your body is just tired. At 7:30pm. You should listen and go to bed. But you don’t. You stay up watching Verlander do what he hasn’t done all season… give away 6 earned runs. I like him. He stayed in the duggout with his team. The team he’d just led into a loss in their first World Series game against the Giants. Other pitchers usually leave when they’re pulled.

After work today I finally did a workout. Monday and Tuesday weren’t happening. It was so nice outside and with the World Series starting I decided to just go for a run and do a short workout in the garage. I ran a mile, did 4 sets of 10 pushups, 10 barbell curls, 10 tricep presses, 10 jumping lunges followed by another mile run. I’m spent!

I always think of arguments for or passionate defenses of the good news I believe in while I’m running. It’s probably in part the lyrics to the music I’m listening to at the time that inspires me. Today, and many other days, I’ve had this argument going thru my head:

God didn’t make us to just be better than the bad guys!

I mean people argue that they’re good people. They say they’re good because they’re better than the bad people they compare themselves to. I find myself thinking that way too. But God didn’t make us to just be better than rapists and murderers and liars and thieves and child abusers and drug users and gangsters and cheats. He made us to be reflectors of his goodness!

The Bible says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The glory of God. That’s what we fall short of. That’s what we were made to be: glorifyers. We were made to reveal or make clearer the glory- the weightiness, the actual-ness, the substance, the presence- of God. Imago Dei. We were made in the image of God. We only think we’re good because we compare ourselves to those worse than us. But if we compared ourselves to the One we were made to reveal we would know how not-good, how fallen we really are.

What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all [things] under his feet…- Psalms 8:4-6

The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned!- Lamentations 5:16

There was only one good Man. The rest of us are fallen.

Quieted,

Sheila