The Reformed Pastor

Have you ever blown it? Have you ever failed God and just plain blown it? If not, then you should be writing this instead of me because I blow it all the time. I get so disgusted with myself! Here I am, pastor of Cleary Baptist Church, proclaiming the Word of God week after week and I can’t get through a week without blowing it! It never fails that after I fall flat of my face, I despise myself. It is almost as though I hate myself (or at least my flesh). I think to myself, "If God is as disgusted with me as I am disgusted with me, he doesn’t want to hear from me." Let’s get real! How many times do we go to God confessing the same old sin that we confessed yesterday, or last week, or last month? Don’t you think he gets tired of hearing the same thing over and over again? How long will his patience last? At least those are some of the questions I ask myself. I don’t know about you, but there are times when I contemplate just throwing in the towel. There are times when I consider giving up altogether. I am tempted to say, "God there is no way that I will EVER be able to live the Christian life." In fact, I felt that way today. In fact, I prayed those words today and do you know what I sensed God said in reply? You are right Kevin. You will never be able to live the Christian life. Adam couldn’t do it. Noah couldn’t do it. Moses couldn’t do it. David, a man after my own heart, couldn’t do it. No one in all of history has been able to live the Christian life except one, and his name is Jesus. If there is any hope, it is found in the life of Christ alone! Maybe what we need to do is to just give up! Maybe what we need to do is just let Jesus live in and through us. Maybe that is the only way we will ever live the victorious Christian life.

Here is my predicament. I love the thought of Jesus living in and through me, because I know that I cannot do it. I am willing to give up trying to work my way to the top, so to speak. My problem is that I am still in the flesh. I identify with the Apostle Paul’s word in Romans 7:14-25, "For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin" (ESV).I don’t know about you, but that is me in a nutshell! The flesh is wrestling with the Spirit almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And when I blow it, like I so often do, I wonder, "How long is God going to put up with this?" I know His mercy endures forever (Ps 136), but come on! There has to come a point in time where God just says, "10,000,000,000,000 strike! Your out!" That is where I was this morning. Then God spoke to me through His word. Hebrews 4:14-16 says, "let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (ESV). God says to all of those who seem to blow it so often, "Hold on to your faith. We don’t have a Savior who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses." Thank God! "Draw near to the throne of grace WITH CONFIDENCE, because it is there AND ONLY THERE that we will find the mercy and grace that we so desperately need. In other words, hang in there, keep the faith, and know that God is a God of holiness and purity, but also sympathy and mercy and grace and love and understanding and on and on the list could go. The time to worry is not when you feel miserable for your sin! The time to worry is when you no longer worry. Until next time….Stay pure.