Inner Challenges

This past Sunday our two-week series The Five Things You Cannot Change moved from external to internal challenges. The intent was to consider those aspects of our human inner struggle that are endemic to us all, and perhaps as well, need a fairer consideration in our present culture. We asked: “what is it about our inner nature that we cannot change?”

Let me name something we cannot see but constantly feel the effects of. This past Sunday we wrestled a little with the meaning of the word “sin”. What is sin? An archaic idea no longer worth talking about? Mistakes? Dysfunctions? Is sin simply bad behavior? (provide your list here) Just what are we talking about? While this is a very large subject, requiring a needful clearing of the ground, the idea is vitally important because of its enormous explanatory power. We intuitively know that there is something about us that we have a hard time changing. We know that we should be different than we are. But how do we explain this intuition?

Here is where we realize our need to consider a very powerful idea. And ideas have consequences. Get this idea wrong, and we find ourselves continually disconnected us from our deepest reality. Get this idea right and we are not only illuminated but liberated. So the question should be asked: what idea about us could move us towards life, health and more possibility? And this might surprise you, but acknowledging an important thing about us that we cannot change may actually save us.

Think about this: for a very long time, whole cities and cultures were subject to plagues because of their ignorance of microbiology. When people failed to understand the existence of microorganisms, they also failed to understand that their experience of life was vitally connected to the world they couldn’t see. What we experience (in the case of my example: death and disease) is vitally connected to what we cannot see (in this case: the world of microbiology). Ignorance does not usually serve us well.

That is why we really need to understand that sin is first and foremost a disconnection from God, the author of life. Sin is a condition, an infection, a broken state of the heart. Only secondarily does it reveal itself in behaviors, attitudes, systems etc. But the visible effects of sin, what we often think of as hatred, abuse, deceit, greed, and a myriad of other “uglies” are merely symptoms of what goes on inside us at the root level of our being. When we acknowledge this, we become candidates for grace.

Our culture doesn’t like the word sin, and perhaps that is because the word has had to carry too much excess baggage. But consider this: that the idea we have casually dismissed has the power to open us back to the deepest change. By acknowledging our helpless state, God does what only he can do, unlocking our truest humanity through his amazing grace. Consider these words:

It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing. (Ephesians 2:1-10, The Message Bible)

This coming Sunday, we will offer a one-off message entitled Jesus and Your Fridge. We hope that you can join us at 9:29 or 11:11 am.

Bob