Holy

You know that moment when God chooses to reveal another part of His character to you? To me, it feels like a bunch of puzzle pieces that have been slowly gathering all of a sudden came together, and I see something I never saw before. I understand something that affects how I live in the day-to-day moments.

My most recent "aha" moment, courtesy of the Lord Jesus Christ, came as I was preparing to speak to some of our lovely women in Mars Hill West Seattle. Reading through Ephesians, I kept being brought back to the truth that if you are in Christ, you have Jesus' righteousness. You have His perfect record. God looks at you and sees perfection, as if you have always obeyed. This is not our own merit, but a gift from God in Christ Jesus (referencing Ephesians 1-2, Romans 3, 2 Corinthians 5:21).

Immediately, here's my internal dialogue: "But wait. As a Christian, as a daughter of God, I still sin. Every day. Sometimes every minute. God still looks at me and sees perfection? He's not dumb. He knows I'm not perfect. I believe God hates sin. I believe it grieves him. I don't understand."

Here I get to preach the gospel right back at myself: "Yes, Melissa! Isn't that good news? God isn't dumb. He is more aware of the gravity of your sin than you are. By His grace, you're becoming more aware of how grievous your sin really is. God looks at you and sees perfection because as Jesus took on the cross and chose to die, he TOOK your sinful identity and gave you his perfect identity. Period. Every sin you will ever commit has already been paid for by Jesus' blood. Nothing has to be done anymore. It is finished. You are perfectly righteous before God because He said so. You can never change who you are in Christ."

Amazing news, isn't it??!! I'm not a slave to my sin anymore! I'm righteous in God's eyes!

Now comes the new truth God taught me about the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Trinity. I've been reading through Genesis & Exodus lately, and being reminded of how holy and powerful God is. After God delivers his people from their slavery in Egypt, and he brings them to the wilderness, he gives instructions on how to build the tent of meeting. This is where God's presence would come. When God spoke, the people would tremble. Yes, they disobeyed often. But when they heard from God, they feared him and would not want to be face to face with him. God's presence was not common. He did not appear to everyone. In fact, when Moses, who was the one who spoke most with God, asked to see God's glory, God told him he could see his back as he passed, but not his full glory or Moses would die. God is holy. This is the same God I worship, the same God all Christians worship. He cannot dwell with sin, because he is without sin. He could not live with his people because they were sinful. He made ways for them to atone for their sin (sacrifices), but he did not dwell with his people.

Fast forward to now, to when Jesus came to be our sacrifice. When he died, and rose from death, conquering sin and Satan. What is one of the promises Jesus gives us when he saves us? That he will send the Holy Spirit (John 14) to every new believer (Ephesians 1). The Holy Spirit is God. Once we become a believer, God the Holy Spirit comes to dwell IN US. God cannot dwell with sin, as he is perfect. The very fact that God the Holy Spirit lives in each believer is sure evidence to me that before God, we are completely and perfectly righteous & holy.

So now, when I doubt my righteousness before God, when I begin sinking into the pit of despair because I keep sinning, this gives me great hope. I have the Holy Spirit in me, and he couldn't be in me unless I had Christ's righteousness too. This is something I can never earn and never lose.

Letter to Baby

Back in November, when I was in my first trimester of pregnancy with Grace, I wrote the following letter. I had completely forgot about it until I stumbled across it today while doing some journaling. I cried as I read it, because God grew that little "prune" into a baby who's sleeping downstairs, and I want this for her more than I did then.


11/26/2011

A Mama’s Prayer
Little one,

I do not know you yet. Baby books tell me that you’re the size of a prune right now, building bone and cartilage, forming teeth buds, and have a heartbeat of 150bpm. I don’t know whether you’re a boy or a girl, how long you will live, what sort of foods you’ll like, your personality, whether you will like your dad and me when you’re grown, your eye color, your voice. I do not know you yet, but the One who is knitting you together knows everything about you. He counts the hairs on your head (or at this point, the hairs covering your body). He knows every word you will ever say. He knows when you’ll take your first step. He knows when you’ll disobey. He knows when you will cry, and what it will feel like for you when you first are betrayed or hurt deeply. He knows when you will rejoice. He knows whether or not you will know him. Your dad and I are praying that you come to know Him. His name is Jesus. He is our Savior. He is our Redeemer. He is the reason we are alive. He is the one holding this world together. If we do nothing else for you (and I hope we do a great many things for you), I hope we show you how much Jesus loves us, loves you, and how much we need Him. Your daddy and I are sinners. We make mistakes every day. Some seem less painful than others, but all of them are sins against God. God made us, created us for good things, gave us a perfect world with no pain and no sin. Nothing was wrong. Then we rebelled against God and sinned by wanting to be God, wanting to know what He knew, wanting not to serve Him and love Him, but BE Him. In the midst of our rebellion and betrayal of God, He loved us and sent His son to earth, Jesus, to pay the debt of the sin we owed him. See, when we sin against God, we now owe him a debt. We can’t ever pay Him what we owe. We don’t have enough. We deserve to die for our sins. Instead of us, Jesus came to die in our place. Now, instead of dying, we are now considered innocent, completely righteous and clean by God. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that incredible? Jesus has given us a gift that we can never deserve or earn. He’s saved our lives. He’s cleansed us from all that was wrong. We are called to simply accept this gift by confessing with our mouth that Jesus is the Son of God, and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead, and we will be saved. Like I said earlier, your daddy and I are praying that you will be saved by Jesus, too. He died for you, little one. He died for the sins you have yet to commit. And then he rose from death, and is alive forever!

I want SO much for you to know the riches that are in Christ Jesus! I was reading in Ephesians 1-2 this morning and felt like I wanted to write you a letter, telling you my heart for you. Even before we know you, your daddy and I love you like crazy. Just because you’re you, not because you’ve done anything for us. Just because you are YOU. Your heavenly Daddy loves us like that, but so much more perfectly. He loves us when we hate Him. He died for us when we didn’t want anything to do with Him, because He loves us so much. Little one, Jesus loves you so much more than your daddy and I will ever love you. We hope and pray you come to love Him, too.

We can’t wait to finally meet you! I’m excited to feel you move for the first time. In almost a week now, we’ll hopefully be able to hear your heartbeat. Every time your dad thinks about that or we talk about it, he starts wiggling with delight and gets a goofy grin on his face. I can tell he can’t wait to meet you, and be a daddy. If you’re a girl, he keeps saying he’s going to be “done.” By that, he means that you will melt his heart, and he will be the most doting, loving, protective man in your life, perhaps until your husband comes along. If you’re a boy, he gets excited thinking about wrestling with you, teaching you how to do things, how to be in a dangerous situation, how to have adventures and take risks, and other boy stuff that your mom doesn’t know too much about :) I grew up with three brothers, but am obviously a girl, so I sort of know what boys are like and how to live with them, but I do not understand them! It makes marriage to your dad very interesting and fun!

We love you so incredibly much.
Greg & Melissa, Mom and Dad (wow that looks weird to me!)


I can't wait to deliver this letter to Grace when she's old enough to read it and understand it. Her daddy, although he is loving and doting and "done" (particularly when Grace gives him a big gummy grin), is doing the most loving thing I can imagine for her. He isn't reading this letter to her. He is telling her every day about Jesus. He is praying for her salvation every day. One of my favorite moments each day is at night, when Greg reads her a Bible story and prays over her. I just sit in the room to listen and watch. I get glimpses of how my heavenly Daddy loves us when I watch Greg with Grace.

I'm back!

Oh, it feels like months since I've "blogged". There's a particular reason for that, which of course I'm going to share below. It's good to be back.

I'm just going to dive in. The last almost-9 months have been insane. To me, at least, they've felt insane. Actually, the last year and 4 months have felt insane. A year and 4 months ago, I obeyed a call I heard from God to leave my job in MN, leave my life there, pack up and move to Seattle, WA, to intern at Mars Hill Church for a year in the biblical counseling department. The call was clear. I remember the year of seeking, and the 2 years prior of seeking until God redirected my gaze from graduate school to church. I remember the Scriptures he spoke through, confirming his word. I remember the confirmations (there were many). What's beautiful about this clarity, is that when the doubts came, I could fight by remembering what God had spoken to me. I could not argue that God's call to Seattle was clear. Even now, I can't argue it. God wanted me here. It's the only time in my life I've heard a clear call to an actual place, a city, a church. Very cool, and exciting.

A summary of that first half of the year: my life as I knew it seemed to change overnight. New relationships, new struggles in my relationship with my parents, loss of the familiar. Circumstantially I was walking through lots of changes, but that wasn't it. God had specific work he was doing in my heart, and it began a couple weeks prior to moving. The previous four years in Minnesota had been filled with healing, restoration, a deeper understanding of who God is as my Protector and my Healer, and even glimpses of him as my Husband. It was an amazingly sweet time of knowing and experiencing God's redemption of my life. During those four years, God began healing me and showing me himself in some amazingly intimate, sweet ways. I still tear up when I think of those four years, and how he stripped me bare of the things of the world, exposed this deep, ugly thing I had hidden in my heart, and then made something absolutely beautiful from something horrendously ugly. I really started to come to know my Jesus in an intimately personal way. My journals were full. My heart was being filled with Scripture, and my mind was being renewed. I started to see and understand more of how God was orchestrating my life. It was beginning to make sense.

That's where I was. Coming to Seattle, God opened a whole new chapter in my heart. This one was more uncomfortable, more difficult, and I couldn't understand it at all. I tried to keep up, tried to wrap my mind around what he was doing, but I couldn't. It was too much for me to understand, too confusing, too different from what I had thought he would do. He began opening my heart to more deeply understand the good news, the Gospel, of Jesus. I learned what really happened at the cross. I learned that I am more wretched of a sinner than I think I am, and that He is a better Savior than I think he is. I got immersed in the simple Gospel of Jesus, told to meditate on it, read about it, write about it, study it. I was put in circumstantial challenges where God asked me to live out my trust in him (finances was the biggest area for me). Oh, everything felt suddenly different and harder. Then I got engaged. Then I got married.

Ah, marriage. What can I say about you and the almost-9 months I've experienced? I can say this: it was another chapter of my life, another way God opened up my heart and shone light on things I didn't know were there. Perhaps every newly engaged person thinks this: marriage will be "fill-in-the-blank". My "fill-in-the-blank"s were: "better", "more fun", "challenging", "a place where I will be understood and loved", "a ministry to my husband". It's like dreaming about what living in a third-world country will be like without ever experiencing it, only reading brochures or testimonials about other's experiences. I had no idea what God was writing for our lives together. One important point, however: I do remember the day, the moment, the place that God confirmed for me that Greg was the one He wanted me to marry. God's voice here was also clear. I was getting ready to back out, actually, and God told me to stay. God told me that this was the man I was to marry. So I did. Enter more pain, more confusion, more unmet expectations, and anger at God.

Without going into the details, marriage wasn't what I expected. My husband wasn't who I thought he was. I had no idea it would be so hard. I had no idea things would come up on our honeymoon. I didn't know! I felt completely blindsided, and tricked by God. Granted, I think a lot of what we hit early on was "typical", after talking with other married couples who have more time and experience on us. However, my new husband confessed some pretty serious sin on his part about 6 months in, and his heart before God became exposed in a way it never has before. However, that's his story, and I am not the one to tell it. What I began realizing, as I was walking through something I never thought I would need to walk through as a newly married woman, was that I was angry with God. I didn't like what path he had allowed in my life. It felt too hard, too painful, too disappointing. He called me to marry this man. He wanted THIS to happen? He knew, and he still said yes??? Oh, how familiar this sounds! When I began wrestling through my pain, I asked the same things of God and his character. "How could he do this to me?" God never does evil, nor is he to be blamed for it. God is sovereign over evil, and he uses it for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8). Now another painful season of life hit, and my response was to complain, doubt God's character, become angry at him for allowing pain in my life, and then I tried to distance myself from God. Deep down, I knew I couldn't live life without him. I knew Jesus Christ was the only way to life. I knew I couldn't renounce my faith in him. But because what he had allowed in my life hurt, I wanted to stay at an arm's length from him. I didn't want to get too close. I didn't trust him. I knew he was sovereign, but whether he was truly good was in question in my mind again. Because of pain. Because I hurt. Because of sin. I hear from God pretty clearly when I journal, so I stopped journaling and blogging. I stopped listening to him in prayer, because I hear him when I pray. I stopped bringing to him the deep hurt and the things on my heart.

I finally opened up to a dear friend of mine about this, which was masked in a desire to go back to the way my relationship with God was when I was single. I wanted the comfy couch, Bible and journal open, hours with Jesus, Scripture memory, sweet and intimate moments back again. I had had sweet moments with God recently, but deep down I knew I wasn't drawing near to him. Not fully, not truly. I was holding back because I wasn't sure if this God was good, and because I didn't understand what He was doing. She challenged me, bless her heart :) She knew in this current season of life that I have plenty of "couch time", but more importantly, she reminded me that the God we serve doesn't change. Even if every circumstance of mine has changed, why would the sweetness and intimacy of God's presence and voice change?

A couple days later, God changed my heart and gave me repentance. I finally drew near to God, all of me, and it was incredible. All I was met with was MORE sweetness and intimacy than I had known before, welcoming arms, absolutely no condemnation, but grace and forgiveness. I heard his voice, and I knew his love for me. It was better than anything I've experienced before. My foolish heart forgets so often Jesus' love for me. Praise be to God that His love does not depend on my faithfulness, but that He is faithful despite our sin, and always will be. I still don't understand what He's doing, or why, but at this point I don't want to or need to understand. He's God, and his ways are above mine. If I could understand them, I'd be at God's level, and that's a smaller God than the one I want to worship. And I know He's good. One of the things He immediately whispered to me as I drew near to Him was that "it's okay that you're grieved and hurt over sin committed against you. It's okay that it hurts. It was wrong, Melissa. It grieves me, too." It wasn't a free ticket to hold bitterness or unforgiveness, but an invitation to grieve with my Daddy, with Jesus who knew the ultimate betrayal. Although painful, it was freeing, and it moved me towards forgiveness. And it showed me that God hates sin and evil, and yet he is powerful and sovereign and can use it for his glory and our good. There truly is no one like our God.

True love

In a recent community group meeting, we were talking about the analogy of Christ as the bridegroom and the church as his bride, and the time of engagement we are currently in, waiting for the wedding day to our Groom, Jesus Christ. In the spirit of the moment, I think I shared some marvelous insight from Princess Bride about "true love" (and no, it wasn't the wedding scene!). Interestingly enough, a few weeks later, God brought this back to me as I was reading a somewhat unrelated article about evangelistic worship. Or was it unrelated? Hm….something to ponder. Anyway, this blog is in response to what I heard that day about true love.

Do you remember the last time you REALLY looked forward to seeing someone, perhaps someone you haven't seen in a long time? Someone who knows you better than most anyone. Someone who gets your humor (or lack of it), who seems to read your thoughts before you speak, someone who you trust to make decisions for you because they know how you think and what you like. Someone who's seen you at your worst multiple times, and loves you knowing the worst about you. Someone who has stood in the gap for you when you've been wrongly accused or slandered, someone who has vouched for your character regardless of the cost to them. Someone who has given up vacations, time with other friends, a night out, to serve you, listen to you, help you through something hard. Someone who goes back with you a long time….who has years of memories with you. Someone who has opened their heart to you and chosen to risk, to be vulnerable, to be known by you and who has offered to know you. Someone who has pursued you when you have been unlovable, who has taken hits both for you and from you without fighting back. Someone you know would sacrifice their life so you could live. Has there been someone in your life like this?

I can think of multiple people who have been that "someone" in my life. My parents, Janette, Jen, Erica, Kimmie, Katherine. Most recently, the one who pulls at my heartstrings is my husband, Greg. I see this in him, this sacrificial love, his willingness to be hurt for my good. I see it most when we fight or disagree, or when I am hurt and demanding that he make me feel better. He absorbs my blows, and gives me grace and repents. Not perfectly, but he does. In the presence of this kind of love, I've been noticing a hard part of my heart that fears being abandoned someday. Sometimes I ask Greg, "Are you going to leave me?" He assures me vehemently that he's never going anywhere. As a wife, it's been wonderful to hear that. However, I can't put my hopes on a sinful human man to love me unconditionally, and to never leave me.

Greg's love for me is just a shadow. It's a reflection. It's like a picture of paradise, reminding me of what it is like, but it is not BEING in paradise, experiencing it for myself. His is not the ultimate love; he just resembles the Ultimate Love. He's not my primary lover, he is a representation of my true Lover. He's not my true satisfaction, his sinfulness points me to the only Satisfier. Whether we are single or married, man or woman, we can say this about any meaningful relationship in our lives. Every gift we have on this earth, the ones we notice and the ones we take for granted every minute, are from our Heavenly Father, given to us through Jesus Christ (James 1:17). Everything. If I start writing them down (which I just tried to do), the list seems endless. Those are all gifts from our heavenly Dad who loves His kids with a crazy scandalous love. Every one of those gifts should remind us of Him, the Giver of all good things. I love thinking how faithful He is to remind us so stinkin' often how much He loves us. You would think that dying for us would do it, right? But He knows our frame, remembers that we are dust, our goldfish-like memory, and He keeps showing us His love.

It has become so evident to me after I've gotten married, that I am still engaged. I am still waiting for the final day of BEING with Jesus. It's what I was created for. Everything points to Him. I am satisfied only in Him. In Him is life, and there is nowhere else I can go. He loves me before I loved Him. He drew me to Himself. He died for me. He freed me from slavery, from sin, from bondage, from a debt I could never pay. He drew me out of a miry bog and set my feet upon a rock. He gave His life so I could live. He overwhelms me with grace every day. He meets me with forgiveness. He calls me "My daughter, whom I love." He has prepared a place for me in heaven, and He has called me to join His mission in this "time between the times" before He comes back. He has equipped me for everything He has called me to do. The crazy thing is, the thing He calls me to most often is to rest in Him, in who He is. I don't attract people to Him; He does. I don't heal people; He does. I don't save people; He does. I don't convict people; He does. I don't change people; He does. I worship Him, because He is worthy, and I thank Him for being my God. And oh, how I LONG for the day when I finally get to see His face!

Lessons from Hannah

1 Samuel 1 – OH MY GOODNESS!!! God chose this section of Scripture and powerfully taught me something! Here are my thoughts below – I hope you enjoy them.

Hannah was the wife of Elkanah, as was Peninnah. Every year Elkanah would give Peninnah a portion along with her sons and daughters, but he would give a double portion to Hannah because he loved her, although Hannah was barren and bore him no children. Because of this, Peninnah provoked her grievously, because the LORD had closed her womb. This is the first thing that caught me. “Because the LORD had closed her womb.” Hannah received grief and trouble from Peninnah because of the LORD, as he had closed her womb. Does the LORD not just allow, but plan for difficult circumstances for his people? I think I’m seeing the answer as “Yes”. Let me tread carefully, because this can so easily be mis-understood or written wrongly. Look later in the book at 1 Samuel 14, where it says a harmful spirit from the LORD was given to Saul. Or we can look at the beggar who was born blind in John 9. Or Paul's thorn. Or let’s look at Jesus, whom God intended for the cross before the creation of the world. I need to make a clear distinction here before moving on, as I don’t want you to hear that God delights in bringing pain to his people. If we look at the example of Saul, the blind beggar, and Jesus, and as we are going to look at the one of Hannah, I'm seeing that God does not allow pain apart from His purpose. Everything he does is good, and that includes giving us difficult circumstances, or incredibly painful or confusing ones, so that His glory may be shown. We will see this with Hannah. With Saul, God had his divine purpose in giving him a harmful spirit. It’s been amazing to walk through the story of Israel the nation, the beginning of kings with Saul, and the coming of David to the throne. I’ve seen how God used this harmful spirit for His purposes. With the beggar blind from birth, God knew he would be born blind and chose not to stop it “..that the works of God might be displayed in him.” In this particular instance, the works of God were displayed in Jesus’ healing of the blind beggar, restoring his sight. With Paul in the New Testament, God sent him a messenger to torment him to teach him a wonderful truth that in his weaknesses is God’s strength. He didn’t “heal” Paul from his thorn, as he healed the blind beggar. He instead told Paul that his grace was sufficient for him, for God’s power is made perfect in weakness. He intended Jesus for the cross, an unbelievable atrocity, incredible amounts of pain and death, for the redemption of His people and His church. There is a divine, good purpose in everything God does or permits, both painful and pain-free.

This provoking of Hannah went on for years! Imagine it: years! She didn’t get a break, but lived with this woman, who slept with her same husband. She kept provoking Hannah because she wasn’t bearing children. And this barren womb was from the LORD. So Hannah wept and stopped eating. Her husband asked her why she was weeping and not eating, and why her heart was sad.

One day they were at the temple. Eli the priest was there. Hannah was deeply distressed, and was praying to the LORD, weeping bitterly. She was feeling very strong emotions, and what did she do? She prayed. She was weeping before her God. She was not demanding of her husband, “Give me children, or I shall die!” as Rachel was of Jacob (Genesis 30:1). She went to the LORD with her grief and struggles and pain. In her prayer to God, she asked, “If you look on my affliction and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give me a son (specific, not a daughter or a child but a son), then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.” Hmmm. Interesting request. Think about it for a second. She is being plagued by this woman because she is childless. So she prays for a son. However, she doesn’t stop at just having a son. She tells the LORD she would give up this son to God if He gave her one. You would think that if you were childless, you would desire a child to actually live with you and grow up under your care. But this mother asks something very unique. She asks for a son, and promises to give him to the LORD all his life. I start wondering why. Why would Hannah ask for a son, simply to give him up? Did she just desire the first few years of having a cute baby and toddler and young one, and then drop him off to the temple and the priest so she wouldn’t have to deal with the teen years or drama later in life? Did she simply want the status of having a child? “I had a son...ha! You can no longer torment me.” Did she want her rival to stop bothering her? Probably. I’m sure it would be nice to stop being plagued by this woman every time she went to the temple to worship the LORD. But I think there is more to Hannah’s prayer. She asked God to remember her, and not to forget her. It’s not about her having a son. It’s about God seeing her affliction and showing that He remembered her.

It’s a similar request to the Israelites in Exodus, when they are in slavery to the Egyptians. When the Bible says that God heard the cries of his people, and that he remembered his promise to Abraham, God moved. In remembering their affliction, God delivered his people. I think in Hannah’s request, she is asking her God to remember her and deliver her from affliction.

Fun part to the story: Eli saw her praying (Hannah was praying silently, but her lips were moving), and he thought she was drunk. Hannah corrected him by telling him what she was doing. She didn’t share her request with him. She said she had been pouring out her soul before the LORD, speaking out of her anxiety and vexation. Eli told her to go in peace, and that the God of Israel grant her petition that she has made to him. That’s it. He didn’t tell her prophetically that her request would be granted. It was a blessing from the priest, saying “May he grant your request” but not a guarantee that God would answer in the way Hannah wanted.

This is what strikes me about Hannah: she then went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad. Did you get that? No promise that her request would be granted. No guarantee that the torture would cease. No tangible affirmation that God had heard her prayer and would answer in the affirmative. No promise of any change in Hannah’s circumstances. And yet she washed her face from crying, she began eating again, and her face was no longer sad. Wow! What brought this change? Hannah’s entire demeanor changed. She was no longer distressed. She was no longer living in anxiety or vexation. And she had no promise that anything would change.

This has been very challenging to me, personally. I think of how often I have prayed to God for what I believe is a good gift: a change in difficult circumstances, relief from feeling pain, etc. (you fill in the blank), and then I wait and hope for His answer BEFORE I change my perspective. After praying to God, I have waited, and I have waited still in anxiety, or sat in feelings of sadness/depression/self-pity, waiting for my circumstances to change. This is where God spoke dramatically to me through Hannah. Her hope was not in her circumstances but in the God she prayed to. However God chose to answer her prayer, her hope was in God, and she trusted him for the outcome.

I think Hannah knew something about God that I don’t. If you go to 1 Samuel 2, you see Hannah’s prayer. I would recommend reading it. The first two verses reveal Hannah’s hope: “My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in the LORD.....because I rejoice in your salvation.” The rest of her prayer talks about who the LORD is, and what He does, and what He will do. I think Hannah’s heart was meditating on the LORD. As she understood His character, she gained wisdom, insight, and comfort from who He is.

So Father, as I face what you’ve put in front of me this day, would you turn my face from my circumstances back to you? Would you again remind me of who you are? Would you open my eyes and my heart to understand as I read your Word? As I encounter you, would you change me so I will respond like Hannah when trials come? And may my heart exult in you, as Hannah’s heart exulted in you. Thank you for what hope we have in you.

Ouch!

I think today marks something significant in my life.

Something has been weighing on me in the last week. Something that has a name, but with it carries an inevitable sense of pain and suffering........with a great sense of a future reward, but because I want nothing to do with pain, I have tried my very best to avoid it, to not even find out its name. However, I quickly found out I am powerless to stop what God was bringing into my life. It slowly came, starting with some small nudges and growing to a consistent, pulsing presence that reminded me, "I'm here! Not going anywhere. You can choose what you will do with this, but I'm still here and I'm still coming." It invaded areas of my life that I believed were going well, where I was experiencing what I would call "blessings". It hit intimacy with my new husband. It hit my call to counsel others. It hit my role at work. It hit my relationships. It hit my positive outlook. Slowly, every area where I had found some comfort was invaded and taken over. And yes, I STILL struggled against facing what God was directly calling me to face. It hurt, darn it, and I didn't want to go there!

So this morning, another nudge came in the form of a mistake by my husband. It hurt, yes, and he owned to his sin in it, but God took it and used it as another nudge in my life. I really thought I could wait this hard period out, that somehow the nudges and the pain would stop. It's like I told God, "I can wait out what You're doing. You'll tire eventually of bringing it. If I avoid facing it, You'll stop." I wince as I write that, because in it I see my tiny view of God as a sinful human and my rebellious heart.

I came to work this morning and I couldn't do much. I wanted to escape. He won't let me. He's calling me to repent. So here's the story.

Last week, I started noticing a desire to eat for comfort, to check out, to watch movies, to sleep A LOT, to stop writing and reading (which I normally love). This hadn't happened in awhile, and it caught my attention. "Hm, that's not normal. I can see these are ways I try to check out when life gets too hard. What's going on?" So I fought the temptations as best I could and kept praying.

In the mornings while getting ready, I normally listen to a sermon by John Piper. Also last week, I hit his "Spectacular Sins" series, which talk about how God INTENDS (not uses horrible sins, but intends them) spectacular sins for His glory and our good. As I listened to the one about Joseph, God spoke clearly to me about how He intends suffering for His purposes. It was crystal clear to me. I remembered conversations I had had with people who asked why God allows suffering and pain and evil, and I wanted to go back to them and tell them what I had just heard. "It's for His plan! He doesn't just use suffering and sin, He intends it! In Genesis 50:20, Joseph says to his brothers who sold him into slavery where he ended up in Egypt, "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today" (and I would recommend listening to John Piper's sermon, "The Sale of Joseph and the Son of God"). In an interview, John Piper said about Genesis 50:20, "And the key is that Genesis says, "You meant..." but it doesn't say, "God used...." Rather, it says, "You meant it for evil and God meant it for good," which means that God had a meaning in your meaning, and through your action God had an action. And the book is about how God ordains and causes sin to have a certain redeeming effect." The NIV states, "...you intended it for evil, but God intended it for good.."

So God was speaking gently to me every morning about sins and suffering being intended for good, and I was hearing from Him. He then told me to keep my journal more often, daily, so I could write out what was happening, what I was hearing from God, what I was experiencing, to identify lies and truth, and to see how God is working in my life. I wrote that down, but I disobeyed and did not begin keeping my journal daily. Then the nudges started. Pain began entering my life in various ways. Things began going differently than I had hoped. A couple times, I responded in anger towards my husband and was convicted of that sin and got to repent to him, but I didn't repent of my sin of disobedience to the LORD. I still went on, hoping that the pain would stop and life would return to where it was before, aka where I wanted it.

God loves me too much to give me what my sinful flesh wants. He kept bringing pain, and it kept coming more consistently. And when I say pain, I mean things like: husband sins against me, I sin against him and God, small mis-communications, corrections from those in leadership above me about my work, a friend does not reach out to me in the way I want, and since I had also been idolizing people's opinion of me, that hurt. You can see as I list these out, they are gifts from my Father, who is correcting me as I sin. But I didn't see them this way, as I was still disobeying God and wanting life on my terms. I simply looked at my circumstances and hated the pain.

This morning, I was reading in Numbers, and God used the Israelite's grumbling to show me my heart. They would obey the LORD one day, and they would so quickly forget His promises and His great and mighty works and grumble against Him the next. It was SO revelatory and familiar to me. I knew exactly what they were doing because I was doing it. They grumbled because they didn't want the manna anymore; they wanted meat. They grumbled because they were in the wilderness and couldn't find water. They grumbled about Moses' leadership and wanted to appoint a new leader to take them back to Egypt and slavery. That one got me. I had been telling God I didn't want His way; I wanted my slavery back. Ooof!

So I get to work this morning, and am pressed to repent. I can't live this way anymore. Out came about 3 pages in my journal of confession and the ways I had been sinning against God, and it was a relief to name them all. I felt sick with my disobedience and my rebellion. I HATED how self-absorbed I had become. As I've been in the Old Testament, reading the law of God before Jesus came, and how severely God took sin and how much blood needed to be shed to atone for sin, I've been feeling more of the gravity of sin. One has only to read a few sentences of the laws about cleansing to see how seriously God takes sin. I see more clearly the gift Jesus gave us by becoming our sacrificial Lamb, who atoned for our sins, who was both the sin offering and the guilt offering, who has redeemed His chosen ones from the curse of sin and death. Every sin needed to be paid for by blood. Period. And the lamb that was offered needed to be spotless. An animal with a blemish could not be used for a sacrifice to atone for sin. What that meant to me, is that my own blood wouldn't be enough to pay for my sins. I'm imperfect. I'm a sinner. I've already blown it thousands of times. I have no way of saving myself. So I can throw myself onto the grace of God through Jesus Christ and depend fully on Him for my salvation, freedom, restoration, redemption, healing, and life with Him everlasting.

I have nowhere else to go.

Jesus, thank you for being my sacrifice, my perfect Lamb who died so I could live. Thank you for obeying your Father perfectly. Thank you for interceding for me on my behalf. Thank you for forgiving me and granting me repentance. Thank you for what you have called me to do. And thank you for the pain you have brought me, which has only done good for me! I don't have any hope without You, and I now look to You and You alone for my purpose, my fulfillment, my life. I know it's not about me getting what I want. It is only about You and Your glory. Please help me seek that all my days, and please draw me back quickly when I stray. Thank you for intending sin and evil for Your good and perfect plan. That blows my mind and I cannot comprehend it. And so I worship you.

Ain't about me!

Oh my goodness....where do I start, Lord? Here I am again, recognizing that I have forgotten so quickly who you are and what you've done. I missed the mark and went straight back to my world of tasks, work, responsibility. Something was different this time. You showed me how I use tasks and busyness and responsibility to hide from you, to try to run from you. Jesus, right now I am so aware that I am a bloody mess and there is no point in trying to put myself back together. I have missed the mark! Jesus, I have wanted to make it about me! I have wanted my wisdom, my gifts (which are from YOU!), my life, my actions to be praised. I have ached to receive credit. This sick disease of sin is inside me, and I have no way to dig it out.

I have also seen how I run from total vulnerability. I don't want my full sin exposed. In CG last night, Tom quoted Martin Luther by saying, "Sin boldly." Immediately I saw how I do practically the opposite. I spend so much effort trying to convince others and myself that I'm really not that bad of a person. For example: "My sin really isn't so bad. Look, it's getting better! I'm not sinning as much! Isn't that great??"

Why am I getting the sense that sinning less isn't the goal of life? Just like pursuing comfort isn't the goal of life (more on that in a future book!). I grew up believing that the goal was to do well, sin as little as possible, and 'tis the secret to a happy life. I'm guessing that came from growing up, as I also believed that the way to get my parents to love me was to do things well, don't screw up or make mistakes, avoid sinning at all costs, and that will make others happy around you. Ooo, can you hear how jacked up that is? And yet Martin Luther says, "Sin BODLY." Why???? Why could we sin bodly? How could we have the audacity to sin publicly, in front of our family and friends and co-workers, own up to sin verbally, all of it, specifically, everything, no shades of gray or partial disclosure? How could we name something that seemingly most people would consider shameful or secret, like an adultery or masturbation addiction or hatred of someone we were supposed to love, or failure to lead a wife well, or living as if God isn't always good, even though we KNOW from His word that He can only do good for His children? How can we admit that the sins we habitually return to, knowing that they are idols that do not deliver life or true happiness or joy, that we've been told is sin countless times, and have felt God's conviction, and yet we choose them anyway?

Because God doesn't ask us to sin less. He doesn't ask us to get it together. He doesn't expect anything from us other than being a desperately depraved sinner. How would us "getting it together" bring Him glory? It doesn't. It just doesn't. No matter how you try to wrap it (and believe me, there are MANY kinds of wrapping paper out there), it's pointing the finger straight at you, at me, at the one who is trying to "get it together". When I live there, it is for my glory, not His. It is for my credit, not His. It is so I won't need Him so desperately.

He asks that we believe in His Son, Jesus, for our salvation from our wretched curse of sinfulness, that would have sent us to hell had Jesus not stepped in our place and paid our debt. He asks not that we would do something about our sin, but that we know and believe that Jesus has completely delivered us from the curse of sin and death by taking that curse on himself. He has already done what needs to be done. We can never sin enough that Jesus' death does not cover it. We can never sin too deeply. We can never outsin God's grace for us in Jesus. We can never ruin our standing before God as His child, nor can we fix our depraved, sinful nature. God is telling an amazing story, and He asks us to simply know it, believe it, and join in the immense blessing of being part of His story by living out the AMAZING FREEDOM Jesus has won for us! Yahooo!!!! Jesus is why we can sin bodly. Sin and death have no more claim on us. Let's start living like it.