Do you ever feel like you've screwed up too badly for God to forgive you?
like...where is God? where did He go? when sin - my sin and that of others - seem to have formed an impenetrable barrier between His love and my guilty soul, what respite is there? what hope is there?
when no matter how hard i strive (in my own power), i cannot rid myself of what i am ashamed of, when I cannot forgive myself the sins i have committed and those committed against me?
i hate admitting this, but lately i've been drowning
drowning beneath the weight of condemnation and fear and lies and sin, and, God, i can't seem to get free.
there is no freedom for me.
today i scream/cried to the storming skies that my God, i want to live, and yet, You seem so far away, and where are You when I need You, and why didn't You deliver, and hello can you hear me because I am calling from so far away....
i am the thief on the other cross, asking, why would you look to this man to save you because look at Him and look how good He is at saving people... He can't... He won't... will He?
I know it's Holy Week, but I've grown calloused to Easter...it happens every year, and nothing changes, nothing is different, and even Jesus Christ Superstar which never fails to break me isn't working.... and i am so lost.
and somewhere between the drinking and running into the middle of the street and starving and remembering what terrifies me and walking eyes open into what i am ashamed of because it will never get any better than this and trying to make sense of it all... i have hid away from Him and I am helpless hopeless despairing drowned.
and even though He has been whispering love through it all, ' i turned away, with this sin in my heart tried to bury Your grace and then alone in the night i still called out for You ' but all i met with was silence.
there are so many better people, purer people, cleaner people, people who are not damaged and destroyed by the ravages of sin that how..HOW could anyone, least of all God, want ... me?
he couldn't possibly.
but... don't ask me why i sat down at my computer today, on a whim, and pulled up Cornerstone...
maybe it was St Peter's and peace at long last, trembling shaking in the presence of God, torn between slipping off my shoes and falling headlong at His feet, and fleeing in pure terror.
maybe it was sobbing sick drunk last night after He had hedged me in and slammed every door to the past right in my face, insisting that giving up wasn't an option, but God, i still wanted it.
i don't know.
what i know is that somewhere between the tears and the 'alright God you win but where on earth do i go from here when i can't forgive myself and how could you ever ever use/want me?', i wound up with tonight's sermon.
God grabbed me during worship, and wouldn't let go.
'when all seems lost in my brokenness, i call Your name and You answer.. You hold me up You hold me up'..... 'nothing can separate, even if I run away, Your love never fails'.... 'without You i fall apart, You're the one that guides my heart'
because He's pleading with me to let Him hold me, and I cringe and cry out 'unclean unclean!'.. God, you can't touch me... wouldn't want to touch me.. not if you knew...
but passover. and redemption. and Pastor Gary repeating that Pharoah was stubborn and my sister looked over at me and raised her eyebrows and goes 'hmm...i wonder who that reminds me of'
and... matzoh bread.
the nasty cracker-like stuff that mom buys every year (she never gets the salted kind...), but suddenly it made sense.
matzoh.
see, he was going through a list of how passover is fulfilled in Christ, and the second to last point on his list was matzoh bread. leaven or yeast is sin, and how even a little is unclean, and we love to compare and say 'well at least i'm not as bad as an ax murderer (do you even know any ax murderers!?)
but...in reality....even the slightest bit of yeast will cause the bread to rise - i've done enough baking to know that - and his Jewish friends would have to dust books because even the smallest bit of yeast during passover made a house unclean.
even the smallest bit of sin is uncleanness...is unclean...
and his last point?
that under the blood is salvation. deliverance.. freedom.
in the same way that even the smallest bit of leaven is sin, even the smallest bit of uncleanness is death, and the sin of one man (pharaoh) caused the death of countless firstborns, and the sin of one man (adam) caused death to all... the death of Christ is liberation.... in the same way as the blood of the lamb was redemption, so the blood of the Lamb is deliverance.
we deserve hell, we all of us, no matter whether we're relatively 'good' or are...well..ax murderers, for lack of a better example.
we are all guilty. every one.
and yet... the blood cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
(yes..i know..i've been hearing this all my life, yet somehow never quite like this)
'no mater what you've ever done...when you come under the blood...there is therefore now no condemnation....God doesn't judge us.. he looks at us and sees the blood of the Lamb instead'
and i think i'm finally starting to get it, as the words of an old hymn rise unbidden to my mind.
'the dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, and there may i though vile as he wash all my sins away'.
that's it, the answer i've been looking for. the blood. that simple, that seemingly obvious, and yet that earthshattering
all sin is death, all death is condemnation, all yeast is contamination....
and all Christ is sacrifice, and all can be washed away, and all condemnation is gone because all life and freedom is found in Him, and God knows i still have learning to do, but this gives me peace and hope.
all sin is condemnation
all condemnation is death
therefore, all sin is death
but
but God
and i don't know how to put this in syllogism form and it's kind of annoying me right now because i wish i could.. give me a few weeks and i will, but it makes sense.
it finally makes sense how Jesus is the perfect lamb of God, and the blood covers me and everything I've done and has been done to me, the same way that it covers everyone else, because no matter how big or how small, sin is sin is sin is sin.
it's all the same in the eyes of God.
but..the dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, and there may i, though vile as he, wash ALL my sins away... my old favorite hymn which i finally kind of understand.
all the firstborn were killed for Pharoah's sin, and we all must die for Adam's sin, yet in Christ all our sin, which all deserves death.. is all washed away.
so there will I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away.
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