I never deserved this thing that God did for me; this thing that nobody believes. I know I didn’t deserve it, because I know who I was before. I’ve done terrible things. I’ve hurt people. Hurt myself. Hurt the ones I love. And those were just the things that I was brave enough to actually get done. I had a heart to do much worse. I was a sinner. There was no good in me.
Am I different now?
For two and a half Aprils I attended a church near my home, and the preacher there liked to play a game. He would stand at his pressboard pulpit looking out over the congregation and ask his fun question.
“Who here is a sinner?”
I understood the joke; I knew how the game was played. I didn’t participate, but many hands went up and that’s when the Pastor sprung his trap.
“Wrong!” he’d say, chuckling at his own cleverness. “If we’ve accepted Jesus as our Personal Lord and Savior, then the Bible calls us Saints not Sinners. You’ve got to start believing what God says about you!” The congregation laughed dutifully. Ah! You got us again they said. He’s right they said. God thinks we are the bee’s knees.
I wanted to believe it. I wanted to close my eyes, turn off my mind and accept that version of Christianity where God stands outside the door with His hat in His hands waiting for us to love Him as much as He loves us. Poor God. Look at Him standing out there. Rejected.
That version of Christianity says that God wants to heal us if we can just crack the code and figure out what we’re doing wrong. It’s a Christianity where God is constantly babbling highly encouraging prophetic words to us about ourselves and about others, and all we have to do is learn how to tune in to the chatter and we can Hear From God. That version of Christianity is all about miracles and feelings. It demands that we examine every errant thought or coincidence, because those things may be God sending us an encrypted message from the radio room in heaven.
I wanted to believe all that, and I almost did, but after two and a half Aprils I packed up my battered and confused little family and left. I couldn’t believe in that version of Christianity because my Bible told me about something different. The Holy Spirit wouldn’t let me believe it; instead He broke my heart with remaining sin. He smothered me in my own sin so that when I prayed for the umpteenth dose of forgiveness for my “mistakes” I choked on the words and begged for deliverance instead.
Have mercy on me, Lord! A sinner! You freed me from this bondage, but I’m ashamed. Wash me. Give me a new heart, because this one is my enemy! Rain fire on me to burn away everything in my life that doesn’t Praise God.
God chose to save me. I don’t even know when He did it for sure, but whenever it happened I didn’t deserve it. I still don’t. That’s Grace, and I’m mystified by it. I’m changed by it. I’m not the same as I was. I am a child of the King, strangely forgiven, but sin is still there and I’m still powerless before it. When I am tempted I will fall. I will look. I will talk. I will take. I am a hypocrite and a liar. I am weak. I am a sinner.
But I’m not a slave to sin anymore. I will pray for mercy and forgiveness every day of my life, but I will also pray for power. I will pray for holiness. I will pray for the Holy Spirit of God to declare a great victory in me. And I won’t wait. I will struggle against sin now, in my weakness. I will pick myself up and return to a battle that I have lost a thousand times, knowing that I will lose again unless God comes to help me. I will put sin to death inside me, and I will persevere but only if the Lord keeps me.
Because when it’s all said and done, I’m doomed without Jesus. We all are. And like everyone else I stand at the precipice of eternity, and I’ll step off that edge knowing that unless Christ alone saves me I will perish.
