Sin: The root of evil

Another horrifying day in America. Children dead. Teachers dead. The heart cries out, "Why? How did this happen? How could a human being do such a thing?"  Many folks a thousand miles away spent sleepless nights wrestling with such horror. Parents stole into their children's bedroom to behold their babes and to weep.

Two common answers have swirled about in the wake of this tragedy. It's a mental illness problem, and it's a gun problem. That's Roland Martin's take at CNN, and the sentiment in the Twitter-verse:

"MORE gun control, MORE mental health services. It's no longer a debate. Never was," spewed comedian Patton Oswalt. 

He wasn't alone in his anger.

"The way to honor these dead children is to demand strict gun control, free mental health care, and an end to violence as public policy," suggested Michael Moore.

Anybody notice anything missing from these ruminations? None of these men and few talking heads hold the man accountable for his actions. Man is culpable for what he does.

Man is an independent moral agent responsible for his thoughts, words, and deeds. That's part of what is meant by God when he stated, "Let us make man in our image" (Genesis 1:26). As such, he is responsible for his choices. God went on to strip away excuses when he declared,

"What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person." (Mark 7:20-23)

I do understand that some do not have all of the cognitive tools that others have. Consider the man or woman with Down's Syndrome, but when has there ever been an instance of one with a clear genetic challenge who has gone off the moral deep end and unleashed carnage on an entire school or anything even approximating such atrocity? Rather you'll find the average Down's individual a more moral and compassionate individual than an individual with the standard chromosomal alignment. Nope, if you peek into the cells of butchers like the one in Connecticut, you'll find a set up much like mine or yours.

But what of their past, what of their environment? This has been the focus of modern psychology. We are not responsible for what we do because we are machines, experts assert, and are simply the product of our past and our environment. Does anything that has ever happened to me in the past justify my murdering twenty kids? God doesn't seem to think so. In fact, he goes so far as to command that we control our reactions to slights and affronts.

"But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you." (Matthew 5:44)

Paul, in his letter to the Romans, commands them to,

"Repay no one evil for evil...If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”" (Romans 12:17a, 19)

From the time of the Fall of Man, man's rebelliousness against God and his commands have plagued him and his relationship with his fellow man. He destroys himself and all that is good. Little points to the veracity of the Bible more than what's happening in the world around us. How can man who on the one hand seems to be able to do such good turn about and unleash such evil?

Anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists continue to wrestle with that question, but thousands of years ago, God had recorded for his creatures the truth. Man, created in God's image, has rebelled against his Creator, and while he still carries that image (and thereby the capability for good), that image is marred beyond man's ability to restore it leaving him ever in a struggle against an innate hostility toward God and toward the good.

If you get right down to it, if there is no God, who can say such barbarity is wrong? Is it not survival of the fittest in a world that is red in tooth and claw? But we rail against such a notion. We know such conduct is evil because we were created in God's image, marred though we be. 

So what is it then that causes a man to gun down innocents? The same thing that makes a man cheat on his wife. The same thing that makes a man rob a convenience store. The same thing that makes a man slander a political opponent. It is the sinfulness of man's own heart.

It is for this very reason that Jesus Christ bore in himself the penalty of mankind's rebellion against God. His vicarious sacrifice for us provided the means of justice in dealing with such rebellion by which God's righteousness might be satisfied and by which man might be restored in his relationship to God. Paul went on to declare of the one who has accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to himself thusly:

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come." (2 Corinthians 5:17)

A bit later, Paul declares how this took place:

"For our sake he made him (Jesus Christ) to be sin who  knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (5:21)

Even as a Christian, the struggle against our sinful nature remains (Romans 7:23, 1 John 1:8), but as a Christian, God empowers us (Philippians 2:13) and disciplines us (Hebrews 12:7-10) that our minds and our lives might be transformed to a thing that is pleasing to God (Romans 12:1-2).

And so when horrors like those of this past week come, we grieve. Man's rebellion against God continues to slap us in the face, but we do not have to grieve as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). God has provided the solution to such evil by bearing himself the ultimate penalty that was due to each one of us.

This is the only answer (Acts 4:12). We just choose to ignore it.

The aged Lady

Ah, Madam,

What has become of you?

That was then, this is now. Yes, certainly. But the fabric of the gown you wore when you were young, the one woven of titanium, indestructible, but with a delicacy that revealed your natural beauty, is a tattered mess. You seem stooped. The years have begun to catch up.

Having just past a birthday, I cannot help but think back, and really, your birth was a miracle. Disparate colonies. What did Massachusetts have in common with Virginia beyond a tyrant king? Nothing like a common enemy to drive together a people so different.  And yet, not so different. A biblical Christianity stood as the foundation for the lives of the majority of citizens from north to south. Agrarian livelihoods dominated your young limbs, and even those in the cities--hamlets, really--had extensive ties to the country. Your people read well, read often, read much, and read broadly. Today we read very little unless it's in text shorthand.

Four score and five years into your existence, it seemed that your body would rip itself in two at the navel. The Civil War should have killed you. Consider France. A beautiful country if you look at her skin. Beneath the surface she's schizophrenic and rotted to the core. Seems to have always been that way. Every time she tries to set things right, her own self-interest ruins the day. No principle. No foundation. But, Madam, when your lower extremities began to pull away from your upper, you destroyed the disease, and quite miraculously left both your body and it's soul intact. Extraordinary.

We now stand 150 years removed from that time. For most today, the War Between the States compels our attention if a movie enacts what happened, and then only if they twist history to include vampires. The greatest tragedies and lessons from our past become a backdrop for a horror story.

Today, your atrophied muscles and fragile frame seem to be more like those of France than the strong stature with which you stood as you hurtled toward the Civil War. I believe you stand more starkly divided today than you did then. In 1860, your division was linear, along Mason and Dixon. Now your division seems total with neighboring fingers at war with one another. When we talk red and blue, there does seem to be some polarity along the coasts with moles of blue within the cities dotting the deep red of your midsection, but on the whole, your body is a checkerboard of oil and water, Hatfield and McCoy.

Today, you are racially divided. Back then, the conflict raged between white Anglos in the north and white Anglos in the south. There did not exist a racial hostility or hatred. Yes, there was prejudice and bigotry where many felt light skin superior to dark, European ancestry superior to African, but it was not so much that white hated black or black hated white. The seeds of racial hatred--sowed where?--have blossomed into a hemlock rash that has covered your body. It seems that there is a political element to this disease, too, as the lion's share of animosity seems to come from blue toward red. Go figure, considering the red fought so passionately against the blue to end slavery.

Today, you are morally divided. Some consider the killing of a baby in the womb an issue of personal liberty. "Who are you to tell me what I am to do with my body?" as though ending a life in the sanctuary of the womb were no different than getting a flower or butterfly tattoo. On another moral front, many hold to the God-given institution of marriage between one man and one woman while others suggest that the government should let any mix or multiplicity of partners be considered a marriage.

Today, you are economically divided. In all honesty, you're not, but those with the loudest microphones have convinced the masses that you are a nation of lords and serfs and that the oppression of the lords is far worse than anything seen throughout the Middle Ages. Looking at your economic situation, your people are far better off than they have ever been in history. Your people have more wealth, especially in the lower economic stratus, than has ever been known on this planet. There is not a want of food. Rare is the instance of starvation. None serve under the whip. None have hours mandated by a cruel boss that they cannot quit or cannot leave. None are manacled to the machine. And yet, the idea of unfair, unjust division between rich and poor is as rampant as racial hatred.

Today, you are spiritually divided. Despite the disagreements about the Bible (dizzying to think that some actually advocated slavery as practiced in 19th Century America as a good from the pages of Scripture), the country of the 1800's could appeal to the word of God to discern the way of righteousness. By and large, America has rejected the Bible as an authority for really anything to include spiritual things. Few read it. Fewer heed it. Few preachers, pastors and priests believe it to be the inspired, inerrant word of God. What then do they preach? And why bother? Might as well go to the lake on Sunday. And really, we are largely secular, espousing no religion or embracing a non-offensive, impotent, pick-your-god spirituality. You want to appeal to a moral authority? You'll not find an American consensus in the heavenlies.

Today, you are culturally divided. The only taboo that remains is stating that there is a taboo. No sexual boundaries remain. The only language considered profane is stating anything positive about Jesus Christ or his church. Regarding violence, the human body has been tortured, exploded, slashed, gashed, flayed, slayed, dissolved, dissected, burned, poked, prodded, maimed--you get the idea. Gone are the days when it is clearly a stuffed dummy tumbling down the cliff. No longer will the cowboy grip his chest and fall to the ground. No, we need to see the slow motion spray of blood and matter from the exit wound on his head from seven different angles. Thanks so much.  Many long for good story-telling coupled with discretion, telling more with less. Others long for more of the profane.

Today, you are constitutionally divided. I would say "politically divided," but it's not about politics, the art of compromise. It's about how your government should function. Do we follow the Constitution as the Founders intended, or do we follow the Constitution as it suits us in 2012--no, 2013--no, wait, 2014? If the latter, then you are France, and God help you. I do not believe that even the staunchest Federalist of the late 1700's could imagine the massive and horrifying tumor that would become the Federal government of the 21st century and how it would be destroying your soul. And yet, many today think it should be bigger and have greater control over our lives. Others think it should be razed and rebuilt, brick by brick, upon the very documents that gave you life at the beginning. Which is it?

So back to my opening salvo, what has become of you? And more troubling, what will become of you?

With each of these divisions, there seems to be little to no common ground upon which to stand or even grab some footing. We do not even agree upon a common enemy. Is it poverty? Is it sloth? Is it corporate America? Is it government intrusion? Is it Christian fundamentalists? Or is it Islamic fundamentalists? Is what's happening in Europe good or bad? Is it the Yankees or the Red Sox? We might hope for a common enemy, but even when we were brutally attacked, we lacked the courage to declare that enemy by name.

Your face has grown ashen and it seems that your pulse has weakened. I would love to see you stand tall again, hale and robust, full of color and the glory of a people submitted to the principles woven into your Declaration and your Constitution. Will another election matter? Will it change anything? Can such wide chasms be closed? Or will you finally tear yourself apart?

It seems you have a malignance beyond healing. We see the problem, we feel the problem, but we are powerless to stop the demise. Can anyone from Bangor to Burbank reassemble this crystalline structure shattered into 300 million pieces? It is beyond our reach.

And so I plead with the One who heals to turn your heart back to him. Only God can restore to you a richer and purer beauty than you once had.

I pray to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for that day.

Hell, plain and simple

[WARNING: Robust doses of biblical information to follow]

I just finished teaching through a couple of weeks on Hell in my Adult Bible Class (the adjective "adult" takes on far different meanings when placed in front of different nouns, doesn't it?). Some things we broached in our discussions, I thought you might find interesting because Americans' ideas about Hell are as far apart as Bangor is from San Diego.

Consider, if you will:

• Your opinion doesn't affect reality. I might argue that Paris exists only in mythology. You see, I have never seen Paris. I have seen pictures, but how do I know that you didn't Photoshop the shots to make it look like everyone else's pictures of Paris. In all likelihood, folks only began speaking of Paris after Vic Hugo penned his Quasimodo epic. Despite my absolute denial about the existence of Paris, the city remains in north-central France. Many find Hell disagreeable and therefore, they deny its existence even though many others have the same argument about Paris.


• Most people are wrong. Jesus Christ made the audacious claim that "...wide is the gate and broad the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it," and at the same time "...narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it" (Matthew 7:13-14). He is speaking of Hell and Heaven, respectively. You'll be hard pressed to find anyone in the Bible who says more about Hell than Jesus. Said a lot more about it than he did Heaven. I suspect it is because he didn't want folks to end up there but understood that most were deluding themselves about their final destination. Matthew records that Jesus seems to be convinced that many are enroute to Hell and few are heading toward Heaven. Staggering, really.


• Most people are wrong, Part II. Start asking your church-going friends to describe Hell and like Bangor and San Diego, you'll find them all over the map. Some have followed the illusion of a pop-theology that God will eventually work it all out that none will be in Hell (personally, I'd be a bit bummed to find myself living next to Mssrs. Hitler, Stalin, or Manson on that street of gold). Others think that the death of the doomed brings annihilation. Again, one is left to wonder about justice if Hitler offs his six-million and Stalin offs his fifty-million and the only punishment is death in this life? We all die! How is that justice? No, the Bible's descriptors of a place of on-going torment and of justice meted out seem nonnegotiable.


• It's not going to be a party. You'll hear folks mention, usually at their DUI limit, "I'd rather go to Hell where I'll be with my friends so we can party!" Do these descriptions sound like a party?


• Likened to a fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13:42, 50)
• Darkness (Matthew 8:12)
• Anguish in the flame (Luke 16:24)
• Repayment, vengeance (2 Thessalonians 1:6, 8)
• The punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord (2 Thessalonians 1:9)
• Where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9:48)
  
  Those are just a few of the passages where Hell is described in the Bible. Most of the verses cited here and throughout this post also refer to this as an eternal (never-ending) condition.


• God and the Cross. Many have no idea that the literal place we call Hell, the Lake of Fire, was created by God for Satan and his angels (Matthew 25:41, Revelation 20:10). It becomes the final and eternal location of those angelic hosts that sought to supplant their Creator. Rather than savor their Creator and the position he gave them in his creation, they went their own way and God let them. The final consequence is eternal separation from him and eternal torment for the rebellion they unleashed in the cosmos.
  
  

  

  When man followed in rebellion, he consigned himself to that final destination as well (see again, Matthew 25:41, Romans 3:10-18, Revelation 20:15). God would have been just in the absolute to leave man with that sentence, but he "so loved the world that he sent his only Son" to pay the penalty and to absorb the full wrath and condemnation of God. In so doing, God is just and the justifier of mankind (Romans 3:26).
  
  When folks think Hell is overkill on the part of a vindictive God, they grossly misjudge two things. First, they do not comprehend the absolute purity and holiness, righteousness and goodness of Almighty God. Because we miss the boat on that point, we err on the second point and that is the serious nature of our sin and rebellion before the pure and holy God. To begin to fathom these two things, consider what took place when God was nailed to a cross. Perfect purity became supreme sin. Why would God the Son subject himself to so brutal a death as a human being and to the condemnation and wrath of God the Father if not to provide redemption from eternal condemnation and wrath for man?  Which takes us to my final rumination.


• Hell is optional. This is perhaps the most startling concept within the cosmos. Nobody has to go to Hell. People will be condemned to Hell because they chose to be condemned to Hell. God's not playing "I've got a secret." Psalm 8:1-4 and Romans 1:18-20 point out that the creation itself declares the Creator so much so that the Romans passage declares that men are "without excuse." Psalm 19 shouts the same thing about the creation in the first half of its lyric and spends the second half declaring the glory of God's special revelation, the Bible. Especially in America, if any do not know about Jesus Christ and what he did, it is because they have no interest in knowing. We do not comprehend the gravity of our willful ignorance.

You may well call me judgmental, but I will argue that all I am saying is what God's word says itself, what God says himself. Hell is real. It is a place of torment and punishment. It is for man's deserved rebellion. And man does not need to go there.

You do not need to go there. Consider where you stand before a holy God. He stands holding the free gift of eternal life because of the finished work of Jesus Christ (Romans 6:23). All you need to do is repent of your sin and rebellion and accept Jesus' finished work on your behalf. You would be relenting to his rightful lordship in your life. You as the creature would be submitting to your rightful place before your holy and good Creator.

Now is the day of salvation. It's your call.

The atheist's brother

I find it interesting when two brothers growing up in the same house end up on different forks in the road. When did that happen? What brought it to pass?

My brother and I find ourselves on different roads politically. On the one hand, when it comes to employment, he believes "The Man" (business leadership) is out to get you, but when it comes to politics, he is absolutely convinced "The Man" (government leadership this time) will save us.

Me? If you've read a few posts, you know that I'm big on personal responsibility in the workplace and in government. You also know that I come to those positions not from my own thinking but from what I read in the Bible. If God went to the effort to reveal himself to us through the written word, wouldn't we do well to live our lives in a manner pleasing to our Creator?

My brother and I are not the only two on opposite paths. Take the Hitchens brothers. Christopher is an unashamed, unabashed atheist and thinks you should be, too. Really, that latter position is a great position. If you know your way to jive with reality, why don't you try and convince others of that position? Hitchens has tried to convince the masses by penning "god is not Great" (the actual title capitalization) and "The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-believer."

Did you know Hitchens has a brother named Peter? Do you know that Peter is a Christian? Did you know that he, like his brother, grew up in a religious home but rejected the Bible in favor of rabid atheism?  For Peter, the very thing he embraced turned bitter in his stomach and led him to assert, "That in the end, what I rejected (the God of the Bible) was right." In the following 8-minute video, Peter describes his upbringing, his God rejecting and his God embracing.



About half way through the video, he describes realizing that he would face judgment and that the floor upon which he stood, a floor which was no floor at all in reality, had begun to collapse.

Why does Peter see with such crystal clarity but his brother Christopher, a man whose death is fast approaching due to cancer, has his eyes shut tight? I cannot answer that question, but this I do know, if Peter could do anything to open Christopher's eyes to the truth of man's standing before God and God's provision for man, he would. He understands the implications as illustrated by his own horror at seeing the painting "The Last Judgment" by Rogier van der Weyden, man will die and face the judgment (Hebrews 9:27).

Consider the atheist's passion for the believer. Why does he desire that he not believe? To what end? That he might eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die? Really, Paul said the same thing to the Christian--IF the resurrection had been a farce (1 Corinthians 15:32). But the resurrection is an historical event.

Christopher and Peter

So we face the passion of the believer for the atheist. It's a passion for his very existence, for his life. All mankind will know eternal life for we are not merely corporeal beings. But all of us by our very nature stand in open rebellion against God. Paul makes that eminently plain in Romans 3:10-18 and caps it off with "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" in Romans 3:23. The Christian as exemplified by Peter Hitchens here wants to do everything in his power to illuminate the judgment ahead, call the lost to turn around and ultimately point them to the one who has made the way for restoration and eternal life (John 14:6, 17:3).

It bums me out that my brother and I stand on different political roads, but it bums Peter Hitchens out far worse that he and his brother, Christopher, stand on different roads as they hurtle toward eternity.

Death, life, and hope

Jolene hung up and wept.  When her sister announced she was pregnant, all the feelings she thought she'd dealt with crushed her like an ocean wave.  It'd been three years since "the decision."  Derek bolted as soon as he'd heard.  She didn't dare talk it over with her mom.  In fact, she'd discussed it with no one save the clinic's counselor who said that it was no different than having a wart removed.

That was a lie.  Jolene had begun to feel the baby move before "the procedure."  Where once she felt the flutter of tiny feet, a void as dark as night had embedded itself.  And now for the next nine months, Jolene would paste on a smile and feign delight over each step of her sister's pregnancy.  As the baby grew, so would Jolene's grief. 

Carolyn knew that same, debilitating pain.  Her despair grew to such a size that it seemed only suicide could slay the beast.  Then she heard a friend talking about finding forgiveness from God in Jesus Christ.  She shared that what Jesus had done on the cross covered the sin of all mankind and covered her sin, too.  Carolyn's heart leapt for a split-second and just as quickly sank back into her solitary abyss.  Nothing could atone for what she'd done.  Still she lingered on that "gospel" message.

She flipped open an old Bible she kept on the shelf (for good luck) to one of the books (why do they call chapter-sized sections "books?") her friend mentioned.  Romans.  And she read.  "The gospel...the power of God  for salvation to everyone who believes."  Everyone?  Really.  We'll see.  "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  No kidding, Carolyn grunted.  Then her eye caught.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.  (Romans 5:6-10)

She couldn't undo what she'd done.  Could it be she didn't have to?  Could it be that despite her sin, God could still love her?  Could it be that the love of God in Jesus Christ could heal and restore?  "Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."  Oh my.  In hope beyond hope, Carolyn cried out to God and trusted that what Christ had done was sufficient for her, too.  She trusted his mercy and grace and collapsed into his arms.

From that day, her life had changed.  Oh, her grief remained; the past could not be undone.  But now she had a hope, a real and living hope.  God's word gave her hope for her life even now, and it also gave her hope for the afterlife.  As David said, though her child could not be brought back, Carolyn now knew that she would one day see her child whole in the presence of her Savior.

Still a cloud remained.  Despite the restoration of her relationship with God, Carolyn could not bring herself to share her history with anyone in church.  What would they say?  When the pastor would preach on the sanctity of human life, she grieved in silence, mask firmly in place, unaware that within thirty feet of where she sat, three other women wept inside as well.

The abortion coin has two very dark sides.  On one side, abortion destroys a life physically.  Churches and Christians must not be silent about what abortion is.  It is the destruction of a living human being.  Not because the Pope says so.  Not because my pastor says so.  Not because I say so.  It is killing innocent life because God in his word says so. 

Jolene and Carolyn illustrate the other side of the coin.  Millions of women live in torment over what they have done believing they have no hope.  Even those who have experienced the true forgiveness, the only true healing, that comes through Jesus Christ often keep their secret hidden within the church fearing the potential condemnation from brothers and sisters in Christ. 

Within the emotional trauma of those who have received God's forgiveness in Christ is a promise of grace.  Paul recognized himself as the chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15), but he was unashamed to speak of what he had done before meeting Christ (Acts 22:4, 26:11) because the vast chasm between his before and after testified to the work of his God and Savior, Jesus Christ, in his life.  The very thing that causes you grief, that very area where God has provided you forgiveness and comfort, might be the very thing that will serve to comfort one who has trod that same pathway.

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday is this week.  Those who know the redemption of God in Christ must continue speaking the truth about the horrors of abortion.  At the same time, we must begin to unashamedly offer the hope of redemption in Jesus Christ for those who have walked that midnight of the soul and to unreservedly offer compassion for those redeemed who still grieve the death of their child.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda

I have a past not many know about...just like you. I don't mean to be lurid. Nor do I mean to pique your curiosity (please, forgive me).

As I look across the 45 miraculous years God has given me, I rue much. Inky blots nearly cover my life before I came to know Jesus Christ as my Lord. That should surprise no one. The marks that dot my life after I submitted to my God, those are the ones that would slacken the jaw. I can erase none of them.

When those events bubble to the surface, Satan's minions seem to pluck them out of the goo and hold them to the light to indict me as an utter failure as a Christ-follower. "You LOSE! You stole fizzy lifting drink! Good day, sir!"

Thankfully, Jesus leans over and whispers, "Ignore them. If anyone is in me, he is a new creation. The old is gone; the new is come."

What then am I to do with this unequivocal piece of evidence the enemy holds against me?

"Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing. For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted..." (2 Corinthians 7:9-10b)

Where I have erred in the past, God calls me not to flagellate myself. He doesn't ask that I crack my noggin against the granite. He calls me to repent. Turn around and my child; don't do so damaging a thing to yourself and against Me again. As He told one young lady, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more."

Satan would rather have me focus on the slime-covered indictment. The second half of 2 Corinthians 7:10 says, "...but the sorrow of the world produces death." The self-regret, the self-focus, the penance mindset that the accuser cultivates in us brings death and destruction (no surprise).

I remember very early in my career having received an unsatisfactory mark on my very first evaluation. I knew it pretty much ended anything I hoped would come from that job. My dear friend, Brian Rath, came to me that day and said, "If we could order our lives the way we wanted them ordered, we would be miserable. God knows what he's doing in your life." Certainly, I had not sinned, but this was something I would have changed in a New York minute.

Ten years later, I sat beside Patti, the freshly widowed wife of my dear friend Mark. She stood in her church to thank them for the love and tenderness they had shown her, mere days after Mark's death. With tears streaming down her cheeks, she testified, "If I could see things the way that God sees them, this is the very thing I would choose for my family." Her three young children sat beside her, too. No sin involved here, either, yet Patti understood that Satan wanted her to wallow in regret and misery, while God, though she could not yet see it, knew the plans He had for her.

Regarding my sin, God could have stopped me, but He didn't. Now, He calls me to go and sin no more. He tells me that His strength is made perfect in my weakness. Where I am unable, He is more than able. Where I am broken and shattered, He is holy and complete. Where I am begrimed, He is white as snow and offers me daily cleansing and restoration as I confess my sin to Him.

He has allowed me to pass through what I have passed through to exalt His might and power in my life. Perhaps if you knew from whence I came, you, too, might laud God all the louder for what He has done in me.

Andree Seu has a stirring look at the glory that God has wrought to Himself through our broken lives. Give her a read (here), and sing praise to the God who has set your feet upon the Solid Rock.