Wanted to tell y’all something this morning. I was in the full throes of adulthood, probably not far from middle-age, when it 1st began to occur to me that not all the harsh difficulties in my life were consequences of my past sins long turned-from. It’s a rough way to live,
thinking that every bit of your hardship and suffering you brought on yourself with your foolish faithless decisions. It can be overwhelming and demoralizing. I want you to know that I have found Jesus so merciful, both in my reaping a whirlwind I’d sown & in the suffering
that simply accompanies life on terrestrial ground strewn with thorn & thistle. I also want to remind you that you can sow something new. Something of the Spirit. For me, I really could not break out of the cycle of defeat until I could fully accept I’d been forgiven for my sins.
And, yes, sins. When we lose that word from our vocabulary, we lose our whole theology of the cross. I’m convinced one reason why we can’t find our joy is that we won’t acknowledge our sins and get on with God’s grace. Psalm 32:1 says happy is the one whose sins are forgiven.
A lot of us don’t seem very happy to me. I just want somebody who feels like there’s no getting past your past that there is mercy, there is forgiveness, there is grace at the foot of the cross. Jesus loved you all along. In his faithful hands and under his Lordship you have
a future unbridled from your past. God does not resent a single ounce of grace he’s ever poured out on any of us. The crying shame is in letting it be in vain. Live, sons & daughters of God, in the full consequences of Christ’s cross by faith, fully forgiven & made utterly clean.
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