It’s quite something to recognise the size of the issue of sin.
Recognising the loving heavenly Father and knowing we are made in His image and then seeing how we rebel against that with the dire consequences that we see now as well as what it is to come. Seeing that rebellion in the small and subtle as well as the openly blatant highlights just how great the need is to be rescued, cleaned and restored.
Even acknowledging what God has done in Jesus Christ and embracing that, seeing the problem of sin and the need for Christ can be overwhelming.
That sense of being overwhelmed can also lead into the kind of question about being adequate to serve God. I had a conversation with a friend about the matter of serving God and the community. My friend was insistent that she would love to be able to do so, but just needed to get over some issues first.
I could empathise with where she was coming from. I can recall times in my life where I thought my sin issues were an obstacle from me serving in any capacity. In fact there were times where I thought my issues rendered me disqualified from contributing and serving others.
There’s something about the low of feeling that you are inadequate or disqualified from contributing to the life of community of grace. It affects you when you know you should be contributing. If you take a spectator view of church anyway, it might not be as bad. When you know, however, that part of the deal of being loved by God is to be a functioning part of the Body of Christ, there’s something sad about feeling like you cannot.
It’s here that I’m really grateful for men of God kindly and lovingly rebuking me for my approach to the situation. Issues of being qualified and being adequate for service are not down to our terms and conditions, they’re down to God’s. when it comes to the sin issues, the very remorse we feel about the situation should lead us to repent. There should be something there that reminds us that the grace of God is able to keep us from falling as well as restore us when we fall. That is to say, we can keep going to God expressing sorrow for the problem and seek His help to get over the problem.
In the meantime, however, God hasn’t stopped loving us. He hasn’t switched off from us. He is still waiting for us to receive what He has for us and He is still keen to work through us for the benefit of others. That’s why He began the work, that’s why He’s able to keep it going and that’s why He has a way to see it to its completion. What He requires from us is the humble, obedient, submissive and trusting attitude to believe that and respond in order. That includes allowing healing and restoration to take place. It’s also about recognising that any sense of adequacy comes from Him not from us. It’s also to say that any sense of being qualified for the task is only by faith in Him.
That doesn’t diminish the seriousness of sin or the issues that we struggle with to varying degrees through life. It just reminds us that we’re operating on His terms and conditions and not our own. That focus in itself can do a lot to help us when we feel low and when we feel like we’ve let God down.
(Photo by Mari Helin on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 