Lust, hypocrisy, calloused hearts...Avalanche

I believe that any sin is a tangle. 
   Like a “rats” nest in your hair. It’s not a single strand that makes a mess. It’s one looped in another twisted with another snarled with those until it’s painful to resolve. 
   Like a traffic jam. It’s not a single car. It’s the whole highway crawling along as we finally get a glimpse of the wreck that caused this whole mess.

Like an avalanche. It’s not a snowball, but rather a cracking sheet of immense snow that pitches forward roaring down a mountain, consuming everything in its path, growing greater by the second, until it settles at the bottom, having buried everything and everyone. 

Read 2 Samuel 11 like a story and you see as David’s heart was led astray over time, his sin grew, like an avalanche, piling sin on top of more sin, cover up over cover up, all the way to the bottom.

Because he was a king and his story seems so specific (whoa, I haven’t murdered anyone), if we aren’t careful, we put him in some Bible story and never examine if his path of heart led astray, including lust, hypocrisy, and callousness, could very well be like ours.  

Lust
Lust is not a gender specific issue, just for men. (Frankly, it’s not just a sexual issue.) Consider an author’s stark words that offer deeper understanding of lust. 

Have you experienced this?

David’s story echoes in those words. What was the thought in his mind and heart when he saw her? “If he just had her then he’d be…” Lust enslaved him. He couldn’t conceive of being content without her and so he sent for her and had sex with her. Then it owned him.

Hypocrisy
When Bathsheba sent word that she was pregnant, he scrambled to cover up his sin and make himself look righteous. And he acted like a king would…

royal orders

royal summons to ask royal questions

royal dinners

royally stamped execution orders

royal regards for the loss of a soldier

royal wedding bells.

In truth, David engaged in 

deceit

hypocrisy

tempting others to abandon integrity

treachery

and murder

--all to cover up his initial sin.

Deceit and hypocrisy were two sins I relied on as I struggled with sexual sin. My world revolved around lying to keep from being exposed and keeping consequences to a minimum. 

Hypocrisy seemed an easy game for a while: go to church, answer the right questions, play the part of the good Christian girl. But as my sin grew and grew, my hurting heart became calloused. I still tried to cover sin but I also shrouded my soul in bitterness and arrogance--“This is just who I am, and I’m fine with it!” 

I lied to others and I tried to lie to myself. Underneath the callous was the painful truth—I was not “fine with it.”

Callousness
Coupled with David's hypocrisy was a callousness that grew as his sin multiplied: ignoring Bathsheba’s husband’s integrity, skillfully trying to get him to abandon that integrity, and when he wasn’t successful at that David drafted a military order (carried back to battle by Uriah himself) that ensured Uriah’s death.

Thick layers of sin and cover-up produced David’s response to the news of Uriah’s demise. “You win some, you lose some.”

No guilt. No grief. Just a quenched Spirit. 

Quench, stifle, extinguish, put out--in essence, we can become so calloused to the Spirit that we no longer even feel the conviction and call to repentance anymore. (1 Thess. 5:19) 

Lust, cover-up, hypocrisy and callousness.

Those truths made me search for God in the midst of that avalanche—David’s and mine.Where was He? Had He turned His back, or worse yet, was He done with David? 

Strangely enough He’s found in a solitary statement that clinches the end of the chapter. 

“But the thing David did displeased the LORD.”

That means God was seeing David, knowing what David was doing. God was not the one who had changed or departed. David was. It was David’s heart that was led astray. God was where He had always been, and He was Who He has always been. 

LORD. I AM. Keeper of all the promises His people fail to keep. Holder of the past, present and future even when His people sin and forget. God was remembering who David really was, even when David chose to live in calloused forgetfulness. He was keeping His promise to him, and Abraham, and even you, that a Messiah would come through David, even when God’s covenant was dim in his lustful heart. 

Yes, David had practically abandoned everything for his sin. 
Yes, God was displeased, but not done. God’s story wasn’t finished.
For David, or for us.

The only place where God was done was at the cross where our lusts, sexual sins, hypocrisies and callousness were paid for. It was that place where what we wanted to cover-up, Jesus actually covered. He covered us in His blood. He covered us in His righteousness. He covered us with His record. 

“It is finished.” (Jn. 19:30) 

Done. That’s the Gospel. 

When our sin comes crashing down, the Gospel finds us buried under the weight of it all, with God coming to our rescue. 

How will we respond?

Just another seed of my faith,
Ginny

Experiencing Forgiveness - How I feel forgiven

I think about how I could encourage you this week, and it’s like standing in a candy store, trying to choose something I know you’d love. It’s all incredible, but what’s the sweetest thing I could give you?

During Easter weekend, I want to give you the glorious truth about His forgiveness.

I have found that the longer we walk in a relationship with God and the more God reveals about Who He is, the greater our desire becomes to know and understand forgiveness. When you feel this way, consider these truths:

You stand forgiven.

That work was done on the cross. God tells us that “in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.” (Ephesians 1:7)

 

This is just a slice of an incredible Psalm (Ps. 103) that tells us that God’s love is immeasurable and infinite, and so is the distance He puts between us and our sins. God does not have a trash bucket full of our sins sitting behind His throne that He pulls out when we come to Him, picking up pieces of our trash and messes, showing them to us again, with a stern look of disapproval. No, He throws our sin infinitely away from us, seeing us only through the precious blood of His Son, Jesus. You stand…

Fully forgiven.

What’s more, “Out of sheer generosity He puts us in right standing with Himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where He always wanted us to be. And He did it by means of Jesus Christ.” (Romans 3:24, MSG) If you have trusted Christ as your Savior, you are justified freely--you have Christ’s record of having always obeyed.

What astonishing, freeing truths!

Now I could agree with all of that in my head, and even in my heart, but I’ll let you in on something, I haven’t always felt forgiven. The truth has been told, but the truth be lived or the truth be felt, I have believed that Biblically, God would forgive me. The Bible says in the verses above that God forgives sin because of Jesus’ death on the cross. He does forgive, He will forgive. Absolutely. But I didn't know how He felt about it, and therefore,

I didn't know how to feel forgiven.

I learned something in Psalm 51, a bedrock of my journey to living beyond my past—my journey to wholeness, and it has helped me understand how God feels about forgiving me.

Psalm 51:1-2

1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your unfailing love; according to Your great compassion blot out my transgressions. 

2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

When we long to be forgiven, to tell God about our sin, get it out in the open, and be set free from it, we come to Him with words that sound a lot like

Have mercy on me, O God,

But how does He have mercy? Or why would He?

According to a contract that says He does? According to how hard I ask or how bad I feel? According to how far I've already come in trying to fix my mess?

No.

We know we can ask for mercy and that He will have mercy on us

according to Your unfailing love;

according to Your great compassion

Look at the order of the truths in verses 1-2. His unfailing love precedes forgiveness. His great compassion comes before our confession has ever left our lips. It’s because of these things that He moves to forgive us.

David called and relied upon God’s unchanging character. Consider that your character is known because of who you are and what you do. God set the rules for love and love is always demonstrative. Compassion is sympathy that’s moved to action. Love shows, compassion shows. God is unfailing, faithful love and great, abundant compassion. It is His very nature of love and compassion that is demonstrated in forgiveness.

I think sometimes I don’t feel forgiveness because I don’t believe He loves me without failing when I've failed, and that He has great compassion that He pours out on me when I've screwed up…again. Because I have not been unchanging, because I have wavered, I wonder if God’s love or sympathy for me has changed or run out. Therefore, I just call on and rely on the “have mercy on me” and “wash this away” parts, hoping that part of the gospel still stands, even if God’s “feelings” towards me have changed.

The problem with my thinking is love and compassion aren't God’s feelings, they are His unchanging character. They are Him. When I believe Him, when I call on His unchanging character, then I will begin to fully experience—that’s see, know, and feel—His forgiveness.

blot out my transgressions.

Wash away all my iniquity

and cleanse me from my sin.

And it is full forgiveness. The individual words here all have special meanings. He wanted his rebellion, his premeditated sin to be wiped out, obliterated. He wanted his personal perversity, moral evil, depravity, guilt and fault to be intensively, intentionally, thoroughly, exceedingly washed away. He wanted God to cleanse him physically, ceremonially, and morally from his condition of sin and his habitual offense and its penalty.

His cry was deep and thorough. He wanted nothing more to do with sin and needed what only God can give: cleansing.

And that’s exactly what God did for him.

And what God does for us,

according to His unfailing love and great compassion for us.

Along the way I learned these truths (and other rich, freeing truths in Psalm 51—you should explore it!), but I learned it’s more than knowing truth. It’s believing and therefore, living truth. It took time and experiences living the truth that God not only forgives me but that He loves me and has compassion on me and that’s why and how He forgives me. It’s Him--His love and compassion shown through Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection--that I can run to, rest in, and rely on when I need to confess my sins—trusting I am fully forgiven in Him, and again, I am forgiven for this that I've confessed. And slowly but surely I began to believe and live in His love, His compassion, and I began to feel what I am: fully forgiven.

Just another seed of my faith,

Ginny