My dear sister,
Don’t you love a good story…especially a story in which things begin rocky but the favorite characters end up living happily ever after? When I was a little girl my mama had the habit of reading voraciously to us, her four children. The stories were spell-binding. Saggy Baggy Elephant. Robin Hood. A Tale of Two Cities. Little Pilgrim’s Progress. Lorna Doone. Our little minds were transported to other places, other times–and we were enthralled.
Did you know, my sister, that I grew up on the mission field? I have my share of snake and tarantula and leper colony tales. It was there that our mama read to us and lived for us another story, this one timeless. It was the story of Jesus, the God who came to our planet as a baby to live on earth as the God-Man–to live the perfect life I could never live. It was the story of me and my sin, my dark alienation from God with no hope for life and death and resurrection to eternal life; the story of the true and just God who loved me so much that He, in the person of His Son, chose to reconcile me to Himself by being punished for my sin in His death on a rough and splintered cross, receiving His Father’s wrath upon Himself, in my place, so that I would not be required to bear my own deserved punishment. It was a good story, a scary story, an unforgettable one, but of this particular story I wearied as I grew up. I had believed the story, prayed “the prayer”, and could argue the merits of it with the best of them–all the while being dead to God, deceived by the desperate wickedness of my own heart (Jeremiah 17:9). I became interested in things which were opposed to the story. If I concentrated on the story, I would have difficulty doing the things my heart hankered after and therefore suppressed it in my mind. At first, I loved the fun of pursuing what I wanted, but it wore thin with time and my heart and my conscience grew weary with rationalizations and justifications and dissonance.
Through a series of events, of agonies and frustrations, broken relationships and a broken heart, guilt and misery, my heart remembered that story I learned as a child but had purposely forgotten. My sin had risen above my head. My guilt was so heavy it left me exhausted. I was tired of running from the Jesus of my childhood memory, the story of the One who could break the bonds of that heavy, chained burden upon my back and send it hurtling down the hill at Golgotha–as He had done for Little Christian in my childhood version of The Pilgrims’s Progress, as He did for Abraham and David and Peter and Paul.
I was lying in my bed one night, spent from the struggle, when thoughts of Christ were planted in my head, thoughts of that bloody death, thoughts of a sinless God dying in my place, all my rebellion and disobedience, despair and hopelessness imputed to His sinless dying self. My darkness was suddenly made light in the recesses of my mind. The meaning of the phrase, “the finished work of Christ on the cross”, finally made perfect sense as our great and mighty God regenerated my heart and mind and made me His child, taking all my sin upon Himself, declaring me clothed in Christ’s righteousness in His sight. My sin debt to God was fully and finally paid by Christ and His Father’s wrath was satisfied. Amazing grace that had once “taught my heart to fear” (as that crusty and vile slave trader of old, redeemed by our Christ, wrote), also “my fears relieved”. The story of my youth came full circle, God granted me faith in Him, and I was made new. I am not so arrogant as to compare myself to the great Apostle Paul, but it was my Damascus moment, my Saul to Paul renaming, the old passing away and all becoming new.
We are told in Scripture to not look back, we should forget the things behind and look forward and press toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3: 13-14). But Paul also tells us to look back and remember (I Corinthians 10). We are asked to remember the stories of what took place in the wilderness when Israel of old lived in rebellion, grumbling and ungrateful–and God killed many of them. Paul tells us it is a warning and we do well to look back and remember and not repeat. Israel was also commanded to make memorials for remembrance of God’s faithfulness to them, a looking back and recalling and thanking, as well as for teaching the next generation. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we look back and remember and look forward in anticipation. When we confess our sins in repentance, we look back at the cross, but not to wallow in our sins. We look back in remembrance for warning, for rejoicing, for gratitude. We look forward in hope when all things will be made right at His coming.
Have you heard and read a hundred times that we are to look back and recall the gospel story, to preach it to ourselves daily? Take the advice from the sages in our lives. Look back. Tell yourself the story in the morning, at noon, at night. Remember from where you came. Remember where you are going. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Your sin is gone. Our Father reigns and in His power and control He is the Always Good. He is coming again. Preaching this to ourselves rearranges our perspective on our present and gives cause for rejoicing and tranquility of heart, not for grumbling or panic or anger.
So, dear sister, remember the story, dwell on it, live it. When He comes, if we belong to Christ, we will be like Him for we shall see Him face-to-face, as He is, finally unfettered by our sin–trials and sorrows gone, living eternally in unbroken praise and thanksgiving.
Now, believe it and go tell it.
MARANATHA! Even so come Lord Jesus!
Because of Christ,
I am your sister,
Cherry