Sex // Sin // Saved
I was going to write about how the church has failed us, but instead I am going to write about how I have failed.
Last semester, when I told my friends about losing my virginity, they all had the same response, they focused on God's grace and forgiveness. Grace and forgiveness are baby food and I'm grown up. I've been a Christian for thirteen years (must be why I'm starting to rebel a little, I'm in those angsty teenage years of Christianity, is that even a thing?). Most of my Christian friends in high school were baby Christians and a lot of the advice I got from them made their spiritual life evident. They still have the holy spirit and God can speak through them as much as he can speak through me, however, I am grown and I need more than baby food on my Christian walk. The nourishment that brought them to Christ and keeps them in the Word and in the Lord is not the same nourishment I require to grow in Christ and produce fruit. As we realize we are sinners, we recognize the greatness of the sacrifice Christ made on the cross. As we grow as Christians, we begin to see the gravity of our sins. What once seemed excusable is now disgusting to us because as Romans 6 says "we are dead to sin and alive in Christ," which means we should no longer be living in sin. As we grow closer to Christ, we begin to see like Christ. God and sin are oil and water, they do not mix and when we choose Christ, we are denying sin. I am beginning to see what Christ sees and as I love like Him, I also hate like Him. I've prayed a thousand times, "break my heart for what breaks yours" and I finally am beginning to feel and see the depth of sin. It is a curious thing to hate sin and to detest our own flesh.
Hating the sin does not mean that I hate the sinner. I love them all the more because I see what sin does to our spiritual and physical lives. Sin ruins our eternal future by separating us from God. It's an odd dynamic to love someone. I am still learning this and by no means anywhere close to loving the way I should, however, I am beginning to understand what it means to love. Love is gentleness, but it is also saying the tough things. Ignatius says, "love does not allow me to be silent concerning you." (Ephesians 3:2). As God loved us enough to send His son to die for our sins. This means two things: grace and gravity. Grace: we are forgiven for our sins. Gravity: this does not excuse our behavior. We are justified by faith, but that doesn't mean sin is okay. God forgives us, but he does not excuse our sin. We are without excuse.
I digress. All of last semester, I would say, "That's not who I am."
"I am not that girl"
adamantly. repetitively. convincingly. earnestly.
i said it. i wrote it. i typed it. i thought it. i felt it. i screamed it. i whispered it.
Yet. I am not convinced and I don't think I'm fooling anyone.
I am that girl. I am a sinner. I am renewed and yet I am prone to wander. I still sin. I still fall. I am that girl. I may be forgiven, but I still fall into temptation. I still commit sin and all the forgiveness in the world does not make it okay. Forgiveness means I get to go to heaven. Forgiveness does not mean that my trials here on earth will be easy. Forgiveness means that God loves me, but it doesn't mean I am not seduced by the pleasures of the flesh and the "old self" addictions that are built into my body.
Somehow I thought my reputation would justify my current actions, but that's not the way it works because I am a sinner. We are sinners. We are broken. We are not justified by our reasoning and excuses. We are justified by faith. We are justified, but sin is not justified. Sin is not okay, it is not acceptable. That being said. We are all sinners. We all sin and even once we hate the sin, we will still stumble. "I am a sinner, if it's not one thing, it's another" and "what if I fall, what if I stumble?" "I am not the sum of my past mistakes". I am a sinner. Sin is not okay, but sin is forgivable. As Romans 6:1 says, we should not sin so grace can increase. Just because we are justified does not mean we should continue to sin. We should die to sin. I don't say "that's not who I am" anymore because I am a sinner. Those actions should not define me because I am dead to sin, but it is hypocritical for me to ignore the log in my eye. I sin. It is a part of the flesh which my soul resides in. So long as I am on this fallen world, I will continue to fall, but I am falling upward. It is a slow climb to heaven, with Christ carrying me up the Jacob's ladder, yet as I get to know and love him better, I am ascending. I fall, but not as far down. I stumble, but keep my eyes fixed on my savior.
This semester, I thought it could be different. It wasn't until I was sitting in church on Sunday after a Saturday I would prefer to forget with tears in my eyes and a weight on my chest that I realized that taking up my cross for Jesus means abandoning my own life. It means that I need to live for Him. I realized that I need Jesus to carry the burden for me though because I cannot "fix myself". It took heart wrenching, body shaking sobs, and a prayer of desperation in my darkest moment telling God that I could not do it on my own. It still takes silencing my flesh so I can hear the wind, the still small voice telling me to abandon myself for Him. I thought it would be easy. I thought I wasn't that girl. I thought...
On my face, literally shaking, trying to collect the thoughts in my head, it was then that I heard the still small voice. Over my loud sobs and screaming prayers, I heard His whisper telling me to talk to one girl. I barely knew her, but I God said she was the one to talk to. "Why her?" I thought, but obeyed. Texting her, I realized that this was the will of God.
Walking around our campus late at night for two hours sharing our stories. I had prayed for God to send me someone to say "No" and she did.
All of last semester I was told that it was okay. I was given a slap on the wrist from my friends and sent on my way, told not to do it again. I was given a slap on the wrist when I needed a slap in the face. I needed to be told how incredibly sinful I was. There is a fine line between that annoying self-righteous friend and the friend who keeps me accountable, but I needed something! That's when she told me about the compare game we play. She told me that I had no excuse to dress inappropriately, even if I was feeling inappropriate or needed some extra affirmation. She told me there was no excuse for falling into temptation and it was exactly what I needed to hear.
"We look at sin like skyscrapers and see that someone else's skyscraper is bigger than our's, but God views our sin from the top and they are all just buildings," she made the analogy to say that God views all sin the same. She is a visual, artistic person. I am not.
I see things in numbers and facts. I'm math minded. I see God as infinity. He can get bigger and yet he still is infinity. He can take some of himself to create us, and yet he is still infinity. Sin is negative infinity ( the absence of God) and one "little" sin is negative infinity. One "big" sin is also negative infinity. No matter how much negative infinity we have it is still negative infinity. It is still separation. It is all equal. Infinity is an unsurpassed distance away from negative infinity, yet Christ bridged that gap for us. Isn't that crazy?
Reading my last few blog posts, I can clearly see the spiritual change from the beginning of last semester, when I was utterly shattered because I was relying on other things instead of God to satisfy me, to now. Even though, I still stumble and I feel like I'm facing upwards towards God, but falling. She explained it that it feels like I am on a moving sidewalk moving away from God and even though I am running towards Him, I get further away. This is why we need Christ. On our own, we can run as fast as we can towards Him, but the distance will remain (negative infinity cannot reach infinity on it's own. negative infinity and infinity cannot even coexist) [again, sorry, but math proves God. What? It is crazy how God put proof of himself in everything... His invisible attributes are everywhere. Fibonacci series. infinity]. We are running, but despite all our effort, we cannot do it on our own. This does not mean that once we get off the moving sidewalk that we can stop running, all it means is that we will actually be going somewhere. All we have to do is ask God to stop the sidewalk.
Again, back to my anecdote. Last semester, I got a more severe reaction from my friends about having unprotected sex than I did for having sex. I think it is because the former has immediate physical consequences and the later has more severe and eternal consequences, but we do not see the immediate consequence. We cannot see the souls suffering in hell while we sit here on earth. The physical consequences are temporary, yet we see them as worse because they are clearly evident and immediate. Sin itself is the greater consequence because eternal separation from our creator is a big deal. Our culture has a tendency to focus on the grace for the sin and ignoring the gravity of separation from God. We have such little faith because we do not have certainty in the things unseen. We think the visible consequences are the bad, but the physical consequences are kind of like my parents grounding me. It is a consequence and it is not fun, but it is for my own good out of a hope that I will not do that again and suffer the real consequences of my disobedience. In the real world consequences are more severe than grounding, but jail is similar in a lot of ways--a consequence to keep us from more severe ones. The eternal "real world" is heaven and hell and the consequences are eternal separation.
I have a feeling that my life will be full of days like Sunday morning. I will find myself on my knees. I will find my face to the ground. I will fall apart. Because I am a sinner. Because I asked God to break my heart for what breaks His. Because I break His heart when I sin. And so I break. And my prayer is that I never stop falling on my face before my creator. My prayer is that I never become numb to the severity of my sin because it is separation from God.
This is way longer than I was expecting and also a little more convoluted than I thought it would be, but all these quotes and ideas have been swirling and solidifying in my head, finally solidifying into a single string of sensible thoughts. Yet, I am sure some of the jumps in my head are not the connect the dot puzzle I envision and looks more like constellation in no real shape. My thoughts are not the big dipper or Orion's belt, rather my thoughts are the belt of the Milky Way on a clear night in the countryside with so many stars that connecting all of them would not make a sensible picture, yet here I am making a connect the dots puzzle out of a ginger's freckles. Good luck deciphering my head vomit and God bless.
Last semester, when I told my friends about losing my virginity, they all had the same response, they focused on God's grace and forgiveness. Grace and forgiveness are baby food and I'm grown up. I've been a Christian for thirteen years (must be why I'm starting to rebel a little, I'm in those angsty teenage years of Christianity, is that even a thing?). Most of my Christian friends in high school were baby Christians and a lot of the advice I got from them made their spiritual life evident. They still have the holy spirit and God can speak through them as much as he can speak through me, however, I am grown and I need more than baby food on my Christian walk. The nourishment that brought them to Christ and keeps them in the Word and in the Lord is not the same nourishment I require to grow in Christ and produce fruit. As we realize we are sinners, we recognize the greatness of the sacrifice Christ made on the cross. As we grow as Christians, we begin to see the gravity of our sins. What once seemed excusable is now disgusting to us because as Romans 6 says "we are dead to sin and alive in Christ," which means we should no longer be living in sin. As we grow closer to Christ, we begin to see like Christ. God and sin are oil and water, they do not mix and when we choose Christ, we are denying sin. I am beginning to see what Christ sees and as I love like Him, I also hate like Him. I've prayed a thousand times, "break my heart for what breaks yours" and I finally am beginning to feel and see the depth of sin. It is a curious thing to hate sin and to detest our own flesh.
Hating the sin does not mean that I hate the sinner. I love them all the more because I see what sin does to our spiritual and physical lives. Sin ruins our eternal future by separating us from God. It's an odd dynamic to love someone. I am still learning this and by no means anywhere close to loving the way I should, however, I am beginning to understand what it means to love. Love is gentleness, but it is also saying the tough things. Ignatius says, "love does not allow me to be silent concerning you." (Ephesians 3:2). As God loved us enough to send His son to die for our sins. This means two things: grace and gravity. Grace: we are forgiven for our sins. Gravity: this does not excuse our behavior. We are justified by faith, but that doesn't mean sin is okay. God forgives us, but he does not excuse our sin. We are without excuse.
I digress. All of last semester, I would say, "That's not who I am."
"I am not that girl"
adamantly. repetitively. convincingly. earnestly.
i said it. i wrote it. i typed it. i thought it. i felt it. i screamed it. i whispered it.
Yet. I am not convinced and I don't think I'm fooling anyone.
I am that girl. I am a sinner. I am renewed and yet I am prone to wander. I still sin. I still fall. I am that girl. I may be forgiven, but I still fall into temptation. I still commit sin and all the forgiveness in the world does not make it okay. Forgiveness means I get to go to heaven. Forgiveness does not mean that my trials here on earth will be easy. Forgiveness means that God loves me, but it doesn't mean I am not seduced by the pleasures of the flesh and the "old self" addictions that are built into my body.
Somehow I thought my reputation would justify my current actions, but that's not the way it works because I am a sinner. We are sinners. We are broken. We are not justified by our reasoning and excuses. We are justified by faith. We are justified, but sin is not justified. Sin is not okay, it is not acceptable. That being said. We are all sinners. We all sin and even once we hate the sin, we will still stumble. "I am a sinner, if it's not one thing, it's another" and "what if I fall, what if I stumble?" "I am not the sum of my past mistakes". I am a sinner. Sin is not okay, but sin is forgivable. As Romans 6:1 says, we should not sin so grace can increase. Just because we are justified does not mean we should continue to sin. We should die to sin. I don't say "that's not who I am" anymore because I am a sinner. Those actions should not define me because I am dead to sin, but it is hypocritical for me to ignore the log in my eye. I sin. It is a part of the flesh which my soul resides in. So long as I am on this fallen world, I will continue to fall, but I am falling upward. It is a slow climb to heaven, with Christ carrying me up the Jacob's ladder, yet as I get to know and love him better, I am ascending. I fall, but not as far down. I stumble, but keep my eyes fixed on my savior.
This semester, I thought it could be different. It wasn't until I was sitting in church on Sunday after a Saturday I would prefer to forget with tears in my eyes and a weight on my chest that I realized that taking up my cross for Jesus means abandoning my own life. It means that I need to live for Him. I realized that I need Jesus to carry the burden for me though because I cannot "fix myself". It took heart wrenching, body shaking sobs, and a prayer of desperation in my darkest moment telling God that I could not do it on my own. It still takes silencing my flesh so I can hear the wind, the still small voice telling me to abandon myself for Him. I thought it would be easy. I thought I wasn't that girl. I thought...
On my face, literally shaking, trying to collect the thoughts in my head, it was then that I heard the still small voice. Over my loud sobs and screaming prayers, I heard His whisper telling me to talk to one girl. I barely knew her, but I God said she was the one to talk to. "Why her?" I thought, but obeyed. Texting her, I realized that this was the will of God.
Walking around our campus late at night for two hours sharing our stories. I had prayed for God to send me someone to say "No" and she did.
All of last semester I was told that it was okay. I was given a slap on the wrist from my friends and sent on my way, told not to do it again. I was given a slap on the wrist when I needed a slap in the face. I needed to be told how incredibly sinful I was. There is a fine line between that annoying self-righteous friend and the friend who keeps me accountable, but I needed something! That's when she told me about the compare game we play. She told me that I had no excuse to dress inappropriately, even if I was feeling inappropriate or needed some extra affirmation. She told me there was no excuse for falling into temptation and it was exactly what I needed to hear.
"We look at sin like skyscrapers and see that someone else's skyscraper is bigger than our's, but God views our sin from the top and they are all just buildings," she made the analogy to say that God views all sin the same. She is a visual, artistic person. I am not.
I see things in numbers and facts. I'm math minded. I see God as infinity. He can get bigger and yet he still is infinity. He can take some of himself to create us, and yet he is still infinity. Sin is negative infinity ( the absence of God) and one "little" sin is negative infinity. One "big" sin is also negative infinity. No matter how much negative infinity we have it is still negative infinity. It is still separation. It is all equal. Infinity is an unsurpassed distance away from negative infinity, yet Christ bridged that gap for us. Isn't that crazy?
Reading my last few blog posts, I can clearly see the spiritual change from the beginning of last semester, when I was utterly shattered because I was relying on other things instead of God to satisfy me, to now. Even though, I still stumble and I feel like I'm facing upwards towards God, but falling. She explained it that it feels like I am on a moving sidewalk moving away from God and even though I am running towards Him, I get further away. This is why we need Christ. On our own, we can run as fast as we can towards Him, but the distance will remain (negative infinity cannot reach infinity on it's own. negative infinity and infinity cannot even coexist) [again, sorry, but math proves God. What? It is crazy how God put proof of himself in everything... His invisible attributes are everywhere. Fibonacci series. infinity]. We are running, but despite all our effort, we cannot do it on our own. This does not mean that once we get off the moving sidewalk that we can stop running, all it means is that we will actually be going somewhere. All we have to do is ask God to stop the sidewalk.
Again, back to my anecdote. Last semester, I got a more severe reaction from my friends about having unprotected sex than I did for having sex. I think it is because the former has immediate physical consequences and the later has more severe and eternal consequences, but we do not see the immediate consequence. We cannot see the souls suffering in hell while we sit here on earth. The physical consequences are temporary, yet we see them as worse because they are clearly evident and immediate. Sin itself is the greater consequence because eternal separation from our creator is a big deal. Our culture has a tendency to focus on the grace for the sin and ignoring the gravity of separation from God. We have such little faith because we do not have certainty in the things unseen. We think the visible consequences are the bad, but the physical consequences are kind of like my parents grounding me. It is a consequence and it is not fun, but it is for my own good out of a hope that I will not do that again and suffer the real consequences of my disobedience. In the real world consequences are more severe than grounding, but jail is similar in a lot of ways--a consequence to keep us from more severe ones. The eternal "real world" is heaven and hell and the consequences are eternal separation.
I have a feeling that my life will be full of days like Sunday morning. I will find myself on my knees. I will find my face to the ground. I will fall apart. Because I am a sinner. Because I asked God to break my heart for what breaks His. Because I break His heart when I sin. And so I break. And my prayer is that I never stop falling on my face before my creator. My prayer is that I never become numb to the severity of my sin because it is separation from God.
This is way longer than I was expecting and also a little more convoluted than I thought it would be, but all these quotes and ideas have been swirling and solidifying in my head, finally solidifying into a single string of sensible thoughts. Yet, I am sure some of the jumps in my head are not the connect the dot puzzle I envision and looks more like constellation in no real shape. My thoughts are not the big dipper or Orion's belt, rather my thoughts are the belt of the Milky Way on a clear night in the countryside with so many stars that connecting all of them would not make a sensible picture, yet here I am making a connect the dots puzzle out of a ginger's freckles. Good luck deciphering my head vomit and God bless.
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