He has torn, that He may heal.

"My strength fails because of my iniquity and my bones waste away." Psalm 31:10b

Our sin is visceral.  It is not a stain that can be scrubbed away or dirt that can be lightly brushed from the surface.  When God removes it, he must penetrate to our very core and rip it from us.  It is painful.  It is debilitating.  Sin is in our bones and so they must be crushed to remove it.  He has torn us that he may heal us.  

The condition of our hearts is more horrific than we can imagine on our darkest day.  This truth is lacerating; the sting of thorns tearing unprotected flesh.  When we think we have overcome a particular sin it will rally with vengeance.  The moment we believe ourselves to have beaten it, is the moment when we can be most sure we have not.

But Grace is the sweet salve that soothes these wounds.  It is the conquering hope because it does not just soothe, or heal, but replaces mutilated flesh with something new.

Yet, I am a sinner, through and through.  I can labor, but it will be in vain.  I can do good, but it will never be enough.  For every sin I defeat there will be 100 more.  I can never stand before God with clean hands.  So, I will bow before Him covered in grace.  I will forever sing, "nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling."   

So, I'll stand in faith by grace, and grace alone.  I will run the race by grace, and grace alone.  I will slay my sin by grace, and grace alone.  I will reach the end by grace, and grace alone.

One year later...

On Friday, January 21, 2011, I wrote this:

So here I go.  Day one of my 365 day adventure.  Maybe adventure is too thrilling of a word… Challenge? Yes, challenge is more like it.  Because that is really what this is, a year long challenge to myself, to commit to writing every day.  I am graduating from college in May, and since I was little I pictured my life after all the “responsibilities” of school; when I would be old enough to do what I pleased, when I pleased.  Unfortunately, responsibility only grows, education being the least of which.  Now I have bills and bosses.  The romantic ideals of travel and free time are a luxury not many people experience.  Myself included.  For most of us, it is just getting by, day to day. So I have decided that this year, I won’t put off my writing until I am sitting in a European cafe with endless time, coffee, a pastry, and a stack of novels as high as the empire state building (cliche, I know).  Instead, I am going to “bloom where I am planted”.  Which, currently, is in my bed with Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová playing on my laptop, and a pile of independent study work next to me (that I should probably be doing instead of this).
So this is my 365 day challenge, because I can’t wait on life, I have to make the most of what it is, where I am.  I have to be all here, or I will miss it all.

Now, 365-ish days later, I am summarizing my adventure.  I can say with complete confidence that my year was not what I had expected.  I can also say with complete confidence that is was better.  I saw God's hand not only in provision but in tragedy.   I have wrestled with sins I thought would never touch me. I have tried to understand circumstances that are beyond my finite comprehension.  I have made decisions I never thought I would make, and I have chosen things I never thought I would choose.  I have lost someone I dearly loved.  I have witnessed true selflessness and true strength.  I have learned that I do not pray enough, and that I do not pray with faith.  I have learned that I do not hate my sin enough, and that grace brings not only forgiveness but holiness. I have experienced the painful tearing of sin from my flesh, and the healing power of God's Word.  I have come to love and cherish the Old Testament, not just the New.  I have learned to love my God with not only my mind, but my heart. 

I have learned, witnessed, lost, loved, torn, prayed, and changed- but more importantly I will continually be learning, witnessing, losing, loving, tearing, praying, and changing.  

If I could, I would erase everything I wrote one year ago, except for these words: I have to be all here.  The rest of it does not matter.  I do have to make the most of what my life is, and it is nothing but what God has willed.  His will is this:

 “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. [...] I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.[...] 'It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.'"

I have meditated and prayed over these verses for months and my conclusion is this: Go.  I may have the next 60 years, or I may only have the next few months.  The only certain thing in this life is God's call for my witness and nothing short of that.  Jesus said it's done, now do. He said, I have lived, died and resurrected, now tell- I have loved, now love.


On December 22nd, I attended the funeral of Jeffery Harter, my cousin's husband, and a man I grew to love immensely.  With a heavy heart but trust in Jesus, his wife, my beloved cousin, friend, and life-long mentor said these words:

I'm ready to jump back in the water, head first, and swim like I've never swam before. - Robin Harter, Signs of Love

I don't know where yet, only time and prayer will show, but I'm ready to jump in too.

Jeff & Robin

Grace, Love, Courage & Sin: Part 1

It is difficult to bring together in a few paragraphs these ideas: grace, love, and courage.  Character traits and emotions are complicated and multifaceted, making them almost impossible to concretely define.  Through life they appear and reappear, often with different faces. Not bad faces, just different.  Sometimes grace is accepting; sometimes it is enabling.  Sometimes love is gentle; sometimes it is harsh. Sometimes courage is quiet strength; sometimes it is boldly stepping out.  There is a time and season for everything.  Often, in my short 22 years, I have found all three walk hand-in-hand.  They are connected and intertwined, often influencing each other.  The blurred boundaries make separation impossible.

Grace.  I have often heard of it, experienced it, and given it.  It is the frequent cry of the guilty. It is what a sinner clings to.  It is accepting. Grace is the saving favor in which we have no merit. But it is also sufficient in the sinner's life to produce obedience.  It is enabling.

Love.  A most frequently used term. It is a Mother's affectionate touch. It is a soft and patient voice. It is gentle.  Love is the unconditional, immutable power by which God made a way for forgiveness.  But it is also the same Father's firm rebuke.  It is harsh.

Courage.  I will always think of it in To Kill a Mockingbird.  It is doing the right thing, all odds against, with no promise of success. Courage is day by day committing to truth. It is quiet strength. But it is also facing the giants of evil.  It is a man submitting to His Father's will, in full knowledge of what He would bear.  It is boldly stepping out.   

For the Christian, all three are vital in  battling sin.  I thank God daily that His grace in my life has saved me from what I was, but also that it is making me what I ought to be.  It has accepted me, and now it is enabling me.  His love comforts me and has forgiven my sins, but it also is the continual correction for the sin that remains.  It is gentle in its forgiveness, but harsh in its rebuke.  Lastly, courage.  Atticus Finch said, "courage is... when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what."  We may fight daily battles; we may lose.  But we fight anyway.  The difference between Atticus and the Christian however, is that though we may tally small loses, we know the greatest victory has already been won.  We stand firm everyday, even when feeling we have already lost, and take heart in Christ's infinite victory.  The Christian holds with quiet strength, when tempted to despair at sin, to the bold stepping out of our Savior.       

Sin will not go softly.  It will fight and cling to its host like cancer in a struggling body.  But it will fight in vain.  Grace, love and courage did not end with the crucifixion but were resurrected with Christ.  Victory has been attained.  Do not grow weary in battling sin,  for we have been promised that it was "licked" before it began.  God has and will continue to save me from myself, He will redeem what is His. 

"Through all I've experienced these last two years, I have become persuaded of and am confident in this: GOD WINS!... He wins because He heals a sinner from her sin-sickness and removes every last vestige of selfishness and ugliness from her soul.  God wins not because He takes away what is hard in our life --Oh, He will one day cure us of these sufferings and restore our losses, but I tell you that God wins, because in Christ, He is saving you from yourself. " -Jennifer Uwarow 

So I dropped the 365....

If you read my blog (I'm not sure who I'm writing to- if anyone at all), you should have noticed that I dropped the "for 365 days" from the title.  There are a few reasons for this change;  I never followed through on my promise to write every single day;  I don't want to stop writing at the end of 365 days; and since when do life lessons, conviction, and the beauty of inspiration only occur for one year??

(If none of this makes sense to you,  reference my first few posts. Please and thank you.)

Alas, I am once again left with an altered project.  I will try to stop writing about changes I continually make to this "challenge"- it really isn't much of one anymore is it?  However, I can't make any promises.  My mom calls me butterfly, because I "never land on one flower very long."  I guess I change my mind a lot. We will see how long this flower lasts...    

Tonight I Wrestle.

Habitually, I disregard peoples opinions of me.  I am who I am, and I do not live to please.  But above all that I am, I am Christ's.  I bear the name of my Savior and so I realize that I should care about perceptions. That I must care.  Nothing wounds the church like inconsistency in her people.

In turn, I find myself hating how people regard me.  Not because I want them to see a godly life, but because I want them to see God.  I pray they never notice me.  I do not want praise, I do not want recognition.  It disgusts me.  I do not want anyone to see me.   I want people to see my God. I want people to know my God.  I pray I am only a reflector of my Father.  It is not about me, it never has been.  It is always about him, it always has been.

I am left hating sin. I hate when I sin. Mother Teresa said, "the only true sorrow is sin."  She is right, and so nothing burdens me like my own sin.  I refuse to accept it; I cannot escape it.  My hope rests in the fact that I do not have to. That my Lord has done it for me.  He has attained my victory over Satan, sin and death.  A beautiful triumph.  Do I repay his grace and sacrifice with more sin?  I plead with my God, "Never."  Yet, I plead more for forgiveness in the wake of my actions.  The more I pray for obedience, the more I see my sin.  I cry along with Paul, "wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"     
 
So, tonight I wrestle. Tonight I struggle and work.  Tonight I pray. And every night, and every moment of everyday until my time here is done.  God remove every last remnant of sin from this offender.  May my will and actions be bound by grace, and may my failures be covered in it. God be glorified in spite of me.   

“I am content to live and die as the mean repeater of scriptural teaching, as a person who invented nothing, as one who never thought invention to be any part of his calling, but who concluded that he was to take the message from the lips of God to the best of his ability and simply to be a mouth for God to the people, mourning that anything of his own should come between, but never thinking that he was somehow to refine that message, to adapt it to the brilliance of this wonderful century, and then to hand it out as being so much his own that he might take some share of the glory of it.” – C. H. Spurgeon

Its all about us.

One thing has been heavy on my mind for months now: the American church.

We spend money so that worship sounds good to us.  So that the building is attractive to us.  So that the stage has hip lighting for us. So the seats are comfortable for us.  So that getting coffee is convenient for us. So that the atmosphere is easy for us to settle in to.  So that our church looks good to the world.  When did church become about us? When was it about appealing to the world?  Tell me how a million dollar building, light shows, fancy sound systems, coffee shops, and debt are more glorifying to God than people sitting in a dirt field raising only their voices in praise? If it is not more glorifying, then why do we spend money?  Why does the church insist on pouring into itself, rather then pouring out? Because we live in America? Because God has blessed us? Then for God's sake bless the world instead of spoiling the people in the pews.  For God's sake preach the truth and let men hear it, untainted by aesthetics and entertainment.  If appearance is what draws people on Sunday mornings, then they will want nothing to do with our gospel.  If we need modern music and a full band then we are not worshiping anyway.  If we are counting on exteriors then we are saying the gospel needs a crutch, and the power of God is not sufficient.  

We are only crippling the church by catering to its desires.  How can we equip people for the road ahead, for their calling as a Christ follower, to die to themselves when all we are doing is gratifying their self indulgence. We are only injuring the body.        

It has never been about us. The story of the Bible has never been about God catering to humanity.  It has always been about God redeeming us and restoring us to glory.  The church spends its time and resources pleasing itself.  Pastors spend their words gratifying the congregation.  Members spend their energy only when it is self-beneficial.  I am not denying that for Christians, church is a place to be encouraged and poured into, but not for the purpose of stagnant comfort.  It is for the purpose of being sent out, and equipped to make disciples.

In Acts, the gospel was preached in its purest and untainted form, and it was rejected.  They were in the aftermath of the crucifixion and resurrection.  There had not been thousands of years to "contextualize" and "modernize" the gospel (as if it needed this). Yes, there were instances when thousand of people came to faith, but there were also times when the apostles were ridiculed and persecuted.  Did they change or modify the truth? Never.  They saw Christ with their own eyes; they knew that the gospel any other way, was not the gospel.  They were confident with Paul in saying, "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes..." (Romans 1:16-17).    

If someone does not accept the gospel in its simplest, most bare form, they won't accept it at all.  The self-adorned, candy coated version most churches have adopted (dripping with apologies, excuses, or even unsaid truths) is not the power of God.  It is the weakness of man.

My heart breaks for Christians in America.  Many of us do not know sacrifice. Many of us work out our salvation in comfort and ease. I pray I would be content with, "The gospel, the whole gospel, and nothing but the gospel."  Because there may come a day when that is all we have.  I pray I will cling to it.   

Coffee: One step forward, two steps back.

I drink coffee, A LOT.  Which means I go to Starbucks, A LOT. Which means I spend my money, A LOT.  How much money? At least $30 a week.  Howard Schultz is a genius (or maybe just really rich).  My morning, afternoon, and evening jolt is starting to fry my bank account. So, with some resistance (kicking and screaming), I will forgo Starbucks or any other coffee house establishment, for the next month.  I think.


I will miss you soy latte, iced coffee, lime refresher, ethos water, and bacon breakfast sandwich.  Thank you for always being so good to me. 

     

(Another thought: I wonder how much I could make recycling all my cups, bottles, and paper bags....?)