brave

In a recent conversation I had with a very good friend of mine, we decided to encourage each other to be “brave” with our blogs. I had this conversation about 7 days ago and I’m only posting this now. That’s how brave I am.

I’ve been experiencing a completely different life lately. I’ve been experiencing what I am seeing, or choosing to see, as a more real version of me. I feel open; laid bare. Honest with myself.

I’ve grown up knowing that God loves me. I’ve grown up knowing that God forgives me. I’ve grown up knowing that Jesus took my sins on himself and gave himself up as a sacrifice for me. I’ve grown up knowing that I didn’t deserve it. ..

But I’m realizing now that though I grew up knowing these things, understanding them to a certain level I still half believed that I did, in fact, deserve them (in some way).

Last Sunday we had a regular communion service at church. I suddenly found that I was practically paralyzed by the realization of what Jesus did for me. I literally could not move out of my seat because I felt so undeserving. Recently, I have done something that I normally considered to be among the very bad sins. I’m not going to go into detail because I’m not that brave, but what I did has hurt some of the people that I love and has made me feel very ashamed. It has made me feel terribly unworthy to accept forgiveness and completely unworthy to come to the cross.

It is this delve into a deeper sense of sin that makes me realize that I never truly thought I was bad. I understand in myself, in my heart, that I have gone through most of my life believing that the sins I committed were “not so bad”. They certainly weren’t as bad as some other people’s sins that I had known or heard about. This sinning of mine has given me great cause to thoroughly examine my judgments of these other people. It has given me a greater understanding of the “good” I thought was in me.. and how I believed that because of that good, I deserved to accept this love and forgiveness and grace from God.

So I came to this place of worship (church) to meet God. I sat in the pew and watched as others went to the front of the sanctuary to take the bread and to take the cup and I knew that the grace and love and forgiveness that was poured out by my Christ, by my saviour, to save ME: I knew that I did not deserve it. Not by any act of mine. Not by any goodness in me.

ONLY by grace (Eph 2:8). ONLY because of His deep love for us (John 3:16).

I was stunned that I had never come to this realization before; that I had never in my life been paralyzed by the thought of this free gift I had no right to accept. So I’ve been contemplating the levels on which I place sins: some lies are bad, some are REALLY bad; some levels of greed are okay, pride can follow me for a while with no real consequence... These are levels of sins that I have made in my life and I’m reminded now that sin is equal in God’s eyes – not equal to the “not so bad sins”, but equal to the level of the worst ones I can think of. I am reminded that there are no levels where He is concerned. I am reminded how I’ve made excuses for myself and (possibly) never truly come to the communion table and accepted the free gift of eternal life with the conscious realization that under no circumstances could I or would I ever deserve such love as was poured into this gift.

I have no neat and tidy ending to this post. I’m in the middle of it all still, if I may continue to be real and open and laid bare. I am seeing, through this, a God that is willing to get His hands dirty and reach into the muck for me. I am seeing the muck that I’ve been in for quite some time, though it didn’t used to look like muck to me at all. I am seeing a God that has no limits on the love He has for me. I am seeing a God that made a great sacrifice for me knowing that I may not ever see the true depth of love behind it. In the words of another friend “I realize now that it's not that I was worthy then and unworthy now, but that I was unworthy then and am still unworthy now, but mercy is still offered!”

I want to hold on to that kind of love.