Day 86
Die
to Self-Sufficiency
…let
us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do
this by keeping our eyes on Jesus…
Hebrews 12:1-2, NLT
~~~
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I
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Our service to God and to others springs from God’s love for us, and not
from the need to earn a place in Heaven; He has removed our sins as far as the
east is from the west.[i] We owe
no debts but to love and obey Him, along with the continuing debt to love one
another.[ii] We
neither owe nor are entitled to any recompense but that which God has provided
in Christ.
However, just as the Apostle Paul was able to describe his past
atrocities in detail and confess that he was among the worst of sinners,[iii] we
must admit to the depth of our forgiven sin in order to be freed from sin’s
after-effects. Otherwise we avoid the gaze of the Savior who bears the injuries
our sins inflicted, because His wounds remind us of what we would like to
forget (or haven’t admitted to). Apart from this humility we will continue
storing up treasure of our own choosing as signs for others and ourselves that
we really are worthy after all.
Partial repentance is a sad way to
live. When we can’t accept the fact of our own sin, we become motivated by a
terrible need to prove our value to others and ourselves. Pride works against
full repentance, and thus we shore up the walls around a full disclosure of how
vile we have been. We do not repent fully because we fear what repentance may
require. Thus we doom ourselves to frenetic attempts to build credibility,
activity that is self-limiting and fear-based. We become schooled at leaving
relationships and locations that remind us of our sin; we become the opposite
of steadfast. We may politicize friendships
and collect advantageous associations like pearls on a string; we strive for an
appearance of intimacy with many and create dependencies based upon need so
that we might appear Godly and nurturing. But when these many surface
relationships become unwieldy, we must distance ourselves. Self-preservation
becomes paramount.
We can never share in Christ’s humility until we die to any thought that
we have value of our own, apart from Him. And we can never know the amazing
fact of our own inestimable worth to Him until the humility of complete
confession of how we have hurt the Son of God enables us to meet His steadfast
gaze. To look into His eyes is to see our sin unadorned by excuses, but to our
surprise we also see a love so overwhelming, patient, and longsuffering that
our hearts break in adoration. To be loved like this! To know this love! It is
worth everything; it is worth anything.
Pray: Father, show me how I have sinned against You. Keep me from
averting my eyes from You out of fear of seeing myself as I really am. Grant me
courage to look into Your face and see my own sin. Grant me strength to confess
in full, repent in full, and the privilege of being a part of the healing for
wounds I’ve inflicted on those You love.
And then Lord, show me how much You love me, and remind me how very much
I love You. Lord, I am so sorry, forgive me, thank You for suffering for me,
thank You for dying for me, and thank You for steadfastly loving me. Amen.
~~~
…God
sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In
this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son
to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:9-10
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