I am truly amazed that God could ever love me. When I look into the Word, I see a reflection of myself that is never appealing. Sure I can come up with all kinds of excuses for my walk or sometimes lack there of. I am real good at making excuses, sometimes way too good. Bottom line, I am a sinner. That is what I am perfect at. Never has a day ever gone by that I can say I never sinned in. I can't say that about many things at all, but I can surely say it about sin. Yet God, in spite of all my millions of short comings chooses to love me and give a million more chances to start over. That's a disgustful loving God. A God who knows the object of his love is going to mess up day in and day out. A God who knows I will choose the wrong things time and time again. A God who knows I will never be 100% faithful to Him on this side of eternity. I can learn a lot from what I just wrote. I will always be unfaithful in many ways, yet the Holy One will always be faithful. I am reminded of a few passages this morning, Isaiah 64:6 that "all our righteousness is filthy rags before God." Not just some of our good qualities, but every one of them is rotten to the core. Romans 3:23, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," there is no one who has ever lived who does not deserve hell, we all do, even my amazing little boys that I love so much. We are sinners who will always continue to fall short. The words fall short in the Greek refer to coming in last. When put up to God we will always come in last.
Well, with this said does it mean we continue to embrace our excuses and not run after God with everything we have. As Paul says, may it never be the case. It is easy to exchange the amazing life God has for you for a life of excuses. A life that says I am human, I screw up just like everyone else. We can easily become content in our sin, but this is the last thing the Disgustful Loving God wants from us. He wants us to run to Him, to flee our sin and trust more and more in His mercy and grace.
Over the past weeks, I have been slowly reading through John Baker's Life's Healing Choices. God has ministered to me greatly through this read. Helping me to take off the mask that I love to wear and showing me there is freedom from sin, especially those sins that we never thought were escapable. John Baker is the one who started Celebrate Recovery. A ministry that I am seeing more and more need for in the church. Oh how we all need Recovery, especially us who are called ministers. How could we ever stand up infront of God's people and speak of freedom and forgiveness, when many of us never have truly expereinced it ourselves. Oh God I pray that you would continue to mold me, continue to show me your plan, and help me to be faithful to your calling. Show me the way out of my miserable life of excuses and into the life of your freedom. God thank you for loving me, the disgustful man I am.
