Beauty/Wisdom

Beauty: It has been at least a year since I last saw a sunrise. In the last 48 hours God has blessed me with the opportunity to see two.

Wisdom:This is sort of a repeat. Still, I feel it's important. I got to thinking about that upper echelon of Christianity, those people that just walk into a room and light it on fire with their spirit. You know what I'm talking about, the kind of people, you probably even just thought of one or two or more. There are people out there that seem completely possessed with the Holy Spirit, people that are capable of doing unbelievable things. The sort of people who decide that they're going to change something for God, and make it happen.

So what's the point? Well I began wondering why all Christians aren't like that. For lack of a better term, let's say that these are the Christians that Paul suggests should be eating meat, and I'm the sort of Christian who should be drinking milk. I started considering the differences between them and myself. As I thought it over, I realized one stunning difference between us. The people that I am looking up to, the people that I want so desperately to be like, these people are not perfect. They are open about their sin, and open about their brokenness.

I think a lot lately about how hard I try to hide my sin. I re-read this blog, and I see so much about unity and about the importance of openness, and I realize how those two things go hand in hand. We can't be unified if we keep secrets from each other. We can't defend each other from Satan if we don't understand how he attacks each of us.

I make a great effort to hide my sins from the world. I wallow in shame and I stay buried in my own thoughts, doing all that I can to overcome myself on my own. There were people just like me in the bible, and once again, my greatest fear has come true. They were the Pharisees.

I am not saying that we should have hours upon hours of confession in church. I'm not saying we shouldn't. I'm saying that God doesn't want to wait for another perfect human to come to him, he's asked for the imperfect. God isn't waiting for us to put ourselves together before we come to him completely, he's asking us to give him what we have and he'll do something with it.

I cannot stress this enough: God loves imperfect people. He loves to work with them, through them, and in them. Your sin is terrible and hurtful to God, but the only way to make things right and to be set free from it is to be open about it, and to be healed.

If I am ever going to be a champion of the faith, if I am ever going to change the world, I have to learn to quit covering up my sin, and to let God work through my brokenness. His grace is sufficient, and it always will be.

(jake)