No Guilt in Life, No Fear in Death

Scripture is a love story from the beginning to where it leads us today. God created us in His image. He created us to walk in His ways and to worship him, but from the very beginning we have been failures. Our sinful nature and our selfish desires, ambitions, and actions have kept us from experiencing the fullness of God's love. God recognized that his people were in need of a Savior. His desire was for us to know Him, but He couldn't in all his glory be in the presence of sin, so He sent His Son to redeem his people. His Son brought hope, redemption, and freedom at the cost of His own life, but through His death we have life.

This past week, I've been in conversation with a couple of youth about God's love for us. The youth were struggling with the thought of God loving us even if we did things that made Him angry. It may sound childish to some of us, but I think most of us can relate to this paradox. It doesn't make any sense from our perspective. If someone does something that hurts you and they continue to do it over and over again, you wouldn't want to be around them much, but God, for some reason never leaves us (Hebrews 13:5). His love is perfect. It keeps no record of wrong and most of all it never fails (1 Corinthians 13).

We can't wrap our heads around this and I am not going to pretend that I have figured it out. In Hebrews 10, the author talks about Christ's sacrifice once and for all. In the Old Testament it was mandatory for the Jewish people to bring their sacrifices to the temple. Each sacrifice had specific instructions depending on what it was for: guilt, sin, fellowship, grain, wave, etc.

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. (Hebrews 10:1-4, emphasis added)

Although sacrifice was mandated by the law, it could not cleanse anyone of their sins forever. They had to repeat the same ritual every year, but Christ came as the sacrifice once and for all. "Once" as in one time, the last time that blood would be shed for the sins of God's people and "for all" God's people:

"For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says : 'This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds (Jeremiah 31:33).' Then he adds: 'Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more (Jeremiah 31:34).' And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sin is no longer necessary."(Hebrews 10:14-18 emphasis added)

 Most of us know this or have at least heard that our sins our forgiven and that Christ's death has freed us, but we don't live and walk in it. We don't believe that He could love us that much. This type of unconditional and sacrificial love doesn't exist in our lives. We don't see it in the media, in the culture, and sometimes not even in our families, so how can we understand it? I don't believe we will until all things have been reconciled back to Him, but the life we live while we are here on this earth matters and God desires for us to know Him.

We keep ourselves from knowing God by hiding behind our sin. We try to explain that God couldn't love us this way because we feel guilty and we are ashamed of who we are. If God hates sin, which I believe he does, he must hate us, but this is inconsistent with the message of the Gospel. It's a lie that Satan uses to distract us from our Kingdom purpose. Christ's death, His love and grace, His mercy is sufficient for you. Nothing can separate us from this love (Romans 8:38-39). No matter what we do, his love remains the same. We have been failing since our first breath. That is why Jesus had to come.

As we approach Easter and the celebration of His resurrection, I pray that each of you would know this in your hearts and be confident in the Truth that He died for our sinful nature so that we could be free in Him. We can't hide behind our sins because everything that we keep in secret, God knows and sees. Let us fall to our knees before the cross in recognition of our brokenness and the life that he gave so that we would not be bound by the chains of sin. His love covers all sin and to think He is incapable of saving you is to doubt the victory that He claimed on the cross.

Removing the Veil of Self

This past few weeks has been a whirlwind of emotion as I am having conversations with families and church staff about ministry growth, preparing for a wedding, planning youth events, and seeking to follow God better in my own life. I have read or am in the process of reading about seven different books, all with a different focus, but this past week God seemed to bring everything together.

From the conversations last weekend with the parents and all the wisdom that is being poured into our hearts and our leadership, most of us have come to the same conclusion. Christ wants us to be disciples and as such to spread the good news to the world. This is no easy calling and it requires radical obedience to him. I wrote a few months ago about the cost of discipleship, but God has recently revealed to me the one thing that hinders us most from pursuing Him.

I was reading A.W. Tozer's classic, The Pursuit of God, with the associate pastor and was convicted by the truth Tozer shared. The third chapter of his book is called "removing the veil." He firmly believe that our experience with God must born of the spirit. He quote St. Augustine, "thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless, until they find rest in Thee." We were created in God's image for His purposes. We learn to be like him and to love Him only because he first loved us (1 John 4). We can't in all our efforts create a spiritual encounter with God. it must come from Him, but Tozer explains that many of us "are satisfied to rest in our judicial possessions and, for the most part, we bother ourselves very little about the absence of personal experience." He goes on to say later that this:

"The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the church is famishing for want of His presence. The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and that God is in us ."

Most of us fear to be in the presence of the Lord, because everything in us will have to be brought into the light (Ephesians 5:1-20).  We will have to surrender ourselves to His will. This is the hardest thing for us to do, to deny ourselves and follow him. The message that God put on my heart  was at the end of this chapter when Tozer says, "Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us. It can removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction."

Love of ourselves is a sin that we can hide from the world. On the outside we can appear humble and confident, but our thoughts and the reasons why you make the decisions we do or take the actions we take can be hidden from all except God. It will hinder us from seeing what God is doing in our lives and the lives of those around us. Christ tells us we must deny ourselves if we want to be disciples (Matthew 16:24-25) and we are all called to be disciples and to spread the good news to the world.

Ask God to reveal Himself to you not just through teaching and instruction but through a real encounter with his power and strength. Seek him with all you have. It won't be easy, but it is necessary for your life and those around you.

 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)

Worship at the Altar(s)

I have been thinking lately about worship and talked specifically about music in worship recently. In that post I mentioned that worship is really about how we live our lives. I traveled this weekend to a place of worship and God was working on my heart as I considered what it means to worship Him, to remember the places in my life where I felt truly alive in Him.

The Old Testament is full of stories where God's people built altars to honor what the Lord had done at that place: when God called Abram (Gen 12:1-9);at the foot of Mt. Sinai where Moses confirms his covenant with the Lord (Ex. 24); David to stop a plague in Israel (2 Sam. 24:18-25) and many other places of reverence. God actually commands the Israelites to put an altar "...wherever I cause my name to be honored, I will come to you and bless you (Ex 20:24)." Others see the altars set up by their ancestors as reminders and worship the Lord for what he had done for them. These altars became sacred space, holy ground, reminders of the glory of God.

I had the chance to visit the camp where I was saved as a teen and worked at in college this past weekend and I couldn't help but feel like I was walking on holy ground. Camp was covered in snow and I was overwhelmed by the cleansing that God showered on me through that place. I stood and looked out from the place where I shared my testimony for the first time, where I wrote down my sins on a piece of paper and one by one threw them into the fire as a symbol of my decision to never go back to who I was before Christ was a part of my life. I glanced over the field and walked by the cabins where, as a counselor, I sang the same silly songs, played the same games, and listened to the same story  week after week as lives were transformed. Christ allowed me to be a part of the His walk in the lives of so many youth. It was an incredibly beautiful weekend.

I have had many experiences like those since then in my own life and see Christ in the lives of others and this weekend I began to think of those times and places as altars to honor what the Lord as done. They are places where many will go after me and continue to worship Him and to share in His glory, to build their own altars there. They also serve as places where I can go back and be reminded.  I believe that God delights in our worship at all times and he reminds us of the places we have been so that we can go forth with confidence in what he is able to do, so we can build more altars and worship Him at the altars of our brothers and sisters who have gone before us.

I pray that there are moments in your life where you can look back and see how the Lord has worked in your life. I also pray that he provides you with every opportunity to see his love in your life and throughout the world. If you find yourself in a dark time in your life, try to remember what God has shown you in the light. He is faithful to complete his work in you (Phil. 1:6)