Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in My hand. - Jeremiah 18:6
"Jennie, do you think my dad is in heaven?”
My
heart stopped and my brain raced to find the answer. I scanned through
my memories of his mess of a life and found myself doubting.
Kathryn
had recently lost her dad to a heart attack. Her dad, Mike, was one of
the most joyful, screwed-up men I knew. He had broken his marriage and
could be seen more in bars than church. His life did not at all resemble
the steadfast Christian men I knew.
But
something about Mike was alive and full of joy. Every time you were
around him, you felt it. He befriended every person he ever met. The man
loved well.
There
are a lot of things about God and Christianity that are a worthwhile
debate, but the fact that we all sin is typically not one of them. I
have never met a person so brave as to say he was perfect, but I have
met a lot of people who think they are good people. I get the impression
when they say that about themselves, they are saying, “God thinks I am okay.”
On a core level, are we really as “good” as we think we are?
I’ve
always thought the epic war in our universe was pretty simple — good
versus bad. But if you read about the war in the Bible, it was always
more complicated than that, even from day one. Adam and Eve chose evil,
but then they found themselves in a place without church or Bibles or
pressure from their priest. On their own intuition, they ran from God
and tried to cover themselves and their shame with fig leaves (Genesis
3). These were leaves of pretending, the same leaves we call religion or perhaps morality or maybe being good. They tried to cover up just how bad they were.
I’ve
done this. I do this. I impress the world with passionate, visible
morality while avoiding God altogether. There is something to humility
that is costly... something resembling humiliation... an outright
declaration of the wreck we are without God rather than composing a
beautiful existence that barely needs a savior.
We’ve
often run to pretending, to covering ourselves with religion or the fig
leaf of appearing good. It was the biggest fight Christ picked, and yet
it is still our biggest problem. We think we can appear okay... okay to
God and to each other, and that if we construct really pretty coverings
out of our leaves, no one will know.
God is clear. The state of our invisible hearts takes precedence over all the good behavior, over all the bad.
We
judge children on their behavior or performance from the time they are
born. People just flat-out like us better if we are... good.
Everything
in this life seems to hinge on our external behavior. When Jesus came,
He went to the most broken, the least good. In fact, it was always the
most sinful He ministered to. He touched them and healed them and loved
them, and they loved Him back. They needed Him.
I
remember the first time it occurred to me that my life looked more like
the lives of the people Jesus rebuked than the people Jesus drew near
to. I was reading His words to the religious in Matthew, “So you also
outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of
hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:28).
Ugh.
I felt that way. I knew deep down I was screwed up. I also knew nobody
really knew it, and I liked it that way. I did not want to be facedown
in the sand like all the sinners Jesus healed. I wanted to stay bright
and shiny and good, and comfortably on my feet.
When I read the words of Christ, I felt this call. A call to fall on my face.
It
physically hurts to see our pride, to see our sin, to quit playing
good, to feel broken and to need God. And it hurts even more to let
others see it. So we run from falling; we choose large fig leaves to
cover up with and not God. We run from that vulnerable feeling that we
may not measure up, all while aching to measure up.
I
love the song “Beautiful Things” by Gungor. It says, “You make
beautiful things out of dust. You make beautiful things out of us.”
God’s
people have always been good at running from Him. Jeremiah was one of
the people God sent to remind them that God was real and that they
needed Him, and that he wanted them back. So he sent Jeremiah to the
home of a potter. When Jeremiah arrived, the piece of clay in the
potter’s hands was misshapen and ruined. As Jeremiah watched, the potter
reworked the same clay into something beautiful, an altogether
different vessel.
As Jeremiah walked away, God asked him,
Can I not do with you as this potter has done?... Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in My hand. — Jeremiah 18:6
Christ
kept drawing close to broken people while He was here. For the woman
caught in adultery, about to be stoned in John 8, her face in the sand,
Jesus protected her from stones. And to protect her from eternal
judgment, He whispered the same thing that He whispers to us: Repent, because you are not good; you are not okay. Come back to me. You need me. He says, Go and sin no more
(John 8:11), which is impossible apart from the righteousness Christ
offers to those who come to Him in faith. He is what makes us right.
There
is something so beautiful about people aware of their sin and their
need for God. That is beautiful to God. He can work with that, enter
into that. Jesus’ first command after nearly every encounter with a
needy person was for them to repent. He promised these broken people
hope and healing. He promised to make a way for them. Often, after these
encounters, He would turn to the religious people who seemed to have it
all together and confront their sin of pride and pretending. Yet with
every opportunity, for the most part, they never repented. They thought
they were fine without Jesus. They did not need Him.
God
is reaching out to us, wanting us to see we need him. But since He is
God, we think He wants some song and dance from us — in other words,
behavior modification. He actually just wants us. He longs to set us
free. And yes, to accomplish all that, He wants us entirely. God is home
to us. He is where we were made to be. He is what we were made for. We
just forget all that while we are trying to be good and independent.
Pretending to be good halts God’s movement in our life.
Legalism or religion helps us feel better about ourselves, puffs us up,
gives us the posture to be critical and judgmental and prideful. Oh,
and everything human about us loves that. It feels better to live that
way.
We want to not need God.
I
was visiting a halfway house filled with men who had all recently been
released from prison. I hadn’t known what to expect, but my heart
instantly began melting. I saw an older man with his worn shirt tucked
in pouring lemonade — the grainy kind that you add water to and stir —
and putting out cookies that looked store-bought but were arranged in a
pattern on a plate. The other men greeted us with smiles as if they were
welcoming the president. I had rushed to get there that night — I was
dealing with sitters and car pools and honestly I felt a little cranky,
but at the sight of these humble men my pulse slowed and I didn’t want
to be anywhere else.
We
went around the room, and each man shared a little about his life. With
tears and true ownership, each man confessed his weaknesses and
mistakes. Their hearts bled for the damage they had brought to those
they love, and they gushed at how they lived forgiven because of Christ.
There was no air about them, no pretense. Christ had moved into their
wrecked lives and restored them. They spoke with peace, and I sensed
they possessed hope.
I
found myself longing to be like them, these men recovering from the
consequences of sin. I wanted to need God as they did and feel broken as
they did and be transparent as they were. It was as if they were
already exposed... already caught. “Screwed up” was written on their
foreheads — no need to act like it wasn’t. And something about that
brought freedom. It made God the hero, not them.
My
soul resonated with that. Even though I’m a blonde, mom-of- three
pastor’s wife connecting with criminals fresh out of prison, I am a
human, and we humans arrive with “screwed up” on our foreheads. We come
that way, but somewhere between toddlerhood and being a grown-up we
learn to wipe off our forehead signs. To sit up straight. To be good.
But
before God I am no different from these men. My forehead is clean; my
soul certainly is not. That day on an old, beat-up sofa with some old,
beat-up guys, I rethought the things I valued in people and the types of
people I valued, and I realized that God shone more through those
accused and hurting men than through me.
We
are all hiding from each other with big fig leaves, but God says, “You
could stop because I am a way better covering. I have an actual payment
for all the sin you are hiding. But it will take coming out from behind
your leaves. It will take humility to see that you need me” (John 11:25,
1 John 1:8, paraphrased).
The irony is that Jesus' blood takes the least good and makes them the most good. It's beautiful.
We don’t want to fall. We like to see great testimonies of God’s grace, but we don’t want to be the testimony.
Even
though I was bright and shiny—I was full of sin and pride. Eventually I
fell, dramatically, face-first, crying because I had lived like a
Pharisee in all my pride and arrogance. I actually have learned to fall a
lot. I fall because I can’t keep pretending I am okay when I know deep
down I’m not. But I also fall because I find God in the sand. I find God
with my face in it. And then He gets to be the Lifter of my head,
rather than my pride.
About
the same time my more acceptable sin was bringing me to my face, my
friend Kathryn called about her more blatantly sinning father.
Everything I had thought God wanted from me was in question. When you
only look at Jesus, what He did, what He said, who He loved . . . there
is only one thing needed. One.
Anyone
can get to heaven—no matter how messy his or her life. And by the same
token, anyone can be kept out— regardless of all his or her fancy
goodness.
I needed to answer Kathryn.
“I
know this, Kathryn . . . It is the work of Christ that saves any of us.
Our behavior here is really all the same — we all screw it up pretty
bad without God. Some of us are just better at covering our sin up. When
we get to heaven, a whole heck of a lot of people we never expected are
going to be there, and a lot of good people we thought were going to be
there won’t be. God deals with the heart, the unseen spaces in us, and
while your dad never mastered church or his marriage, he had something
inside of him that poured out on everyone who came in touch with him... Did he know Jesus?”
Kathryn
had never asked her dad where he stood with Jesus Christ, so that night
she got on her face and begged God to somehow show her that Mike was in
heaven... she was desperate and pleading for proof so obvious that it
couldn’t be denied.
The
day after pleading with God and with no knowledge of Kathryn’s prayer,
her aunt, with whom she had never had a spiritual conversation,
reluctantly called. She nervously told Kathryn that a voice that she
knew to be God woke her up in the night and told her that Mike was with
Him, and that Mike had given his heart to Jesus a few years earlier when
Kathryn’s father-in-law passed. Her aunt hadn’t even been at the
funeral, but they all agreed, as they thought back, that her dad had
experienced a sudden shift toward spiritual things. She remembered that
something was different in him following that time — not perfect or
“good” or showy, but something deep and real had appeared.
Grace is scary insane.
Grace
says you have nothing to give, nothing to earn, nothing to pay. You
couldn’t if you tried!.. Salvation is a free gift. You simply lay hold
of what Christ has provided. Period. And yet the heretical doctrine of
works goes on all around the world and always will. It is effective
because the pride of men and women is so strong. We simply have to do
something in order to feel right about it. It just doesn’t make good
humanistic sense to get something valuable for nothing.
In one act God did what no amount of effort on our part could do. He sacrificed His perfect Son, placing every sin on Him.
It’s
not just those in prison who are far from God; often it’s those of us
sitting in pews, deciding where to go to lunch after this guy finishes
talking about a God we barely need.
“I will not boast in anything.” I’m getting more comfortable with imperfect forehead signs.
Here is mine:
I am crazy screwed up. And my only hope is my Jesus.
* * *
Your Turn
What does your imperfect forehead sign say? Join the conversation on our blog. ~ Devotionals Daily
(Editor's Note: We heard such a great response to yesterday's devotional by Jennie Allen from her book Anything we
decided to give you another excerpt - and extend our sale on the book.
Jennie is the winner of the 2013 New Author of the Year Christian Book
Award and her writing has been praised for its honesty, passion and
authenticity in communicating God’s truths. We hope you are blessed by today's devotion! Please share it with your friends).
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