I live most of the time thinking I am not such a bad person. I live in denial of the grossness of my heart and my inability well really to do anything with God. Last week I felt like God was hitting me with bomb after bomb of reminders of how gross I really am. I won't go into too many details but let's say I was shown my failures in relationships, in communicating, in patience, in judgmental-ness, in love...etc etc. You get the picture.
In the midst of all of that exhaustion it is easy for me to get caught up in shame...in feeling like I need to apologize to every person I encounter for all my yuck and to feel like I owe God something. Well, of course, in typical fashion, I show up for church Sunday and essentially this was the topic of the sermon: our un-godliness. Randy talked about our tendency toward selfishness, control and destruction. And then we had some sweet time for repentance and worship.
Repentance.
Tim Keller defined gospel repentance as this: "But in the gospel the purpose of repentance is to repeatedly tap into the joy of our union with Christ in order to weaken our need to do anything contrary to God's heart." I like this definition...I think I used to think that if I repented I was saying I will never do this again. But I know I will learn this same lesson over and over. In my coming to the Lord I am saying my desire is to find life in you alone and to remember how you provide for everything I need.
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