in between Lesson #1 and Lesson #2

Just had a few quick thoughts to add about the first part of my testimony. It's amazing how God uses our screw ups in life to keep teaching us about Himself and ourselves over and over again. I don't know why, but I'm continually astounded how God uses these screw ups to continue fashioning me into the woman he wants me to be. Last night I was in a conversation with a friend and realized something about myself related to all of my relationship mis-steps this past year: when I fully rely on the Lord, I forgive easily, but I also want to be forgiven. It loops back to how I view friendship with believers and the fact that I'm naturally trusting of people.

It doesn't take a lot for me to open up to my brothers and sisters in Christ. Maybe it's because I'm hyper-emotional or overly effusive or maybe it's because I really do believe in I Peter 4:8 which commands us to "keep loving one another earnestly." Hopefully a combination of both, but erring to the latter. Now I don't think the desire to be forgiven (really a desire to reconcile with a brother or sister in Christ) is wrong. In fact Christ commands us to lay down our gifts to Him and go and be reconciled to our brothers in Matthew.

And, as my faith matures, reconciliation and forgiveness are two governing forces in my life, primarily because (after over 20 years as a Christ-follower) I have finally begun to internalize that the primary message of Christ is grace. But the more I've analyzed why I want to be forgiven, the more I realize my motivations about it aren't always 100 percent pure. I want to be forgiven because I like to be a person people trust and need and want to tell important life stuff to because at the end of the day I want to feel needed. The problem is that if I don't first and foremost and fundamentally seek that validation in Christ, I'm going to be dissapointed because at the end of the day we're all screw ups (see Lesson #1).

So every day, sometimes every minute, I have to remind myself that I need Christ first. Then my brothers and sisters. Then me. Easier than it sounds but amazingly freeing when you let God lead and get it right. And it allows you to forgive and to love and not expect anything back.

"But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." Matthew 6:33

Lesson #1: I am a sinner, not just a person who sins

As I sit down to write this four-part testimony, I keep thinking about getting these lessons "right," which is unbelievably ironic given what the first lesson is about--that no matter how hard I try I can't get it right. Mostly, I just want this testimony not to be about me, but to be about what God is doing in my life, because my life isn't about me anymore. It's about the Lord. Onto the first lesson then. This year (or really the past six years) has been a year of me learning about my true character. Basically, I've finally recognized that I'm capable of the worst and if left to my own devices I'll be selfish and mean and horrible and do awful things. 

This may not seem like such an "ah-ha" revelation, and I know I'm not going into a lot of detail about what the awful things have been. Suffice it to say I've done things I never imagined I was capable of doing. Most of it's been related to epically screwing up relationships in my life. And as someone who's written an entire blog about love and how much I love the stuffing out of my friends and family and even complete strangers on the street, it's been a tough pill to swallow. For the better part of my life, I've walked around thinking my natural inclination was toward kindness. But my life has become a testimony of that favorite debate topic: is man inherently good or inherently evil? The answer to which God reveals in the very beginning of the Bible after the Fall and before He destroys the Earth with the Flood.

"The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on earth had become, and that every inclinations of the thoughts of his heart was only after evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain." Genesis 6:5-6

No matter how much we want to, or try to, or think we can, our hearts are only after evil. Praise God for this, because if I were inherently good, I wouldn't need the Lord--the Lord who is by very definition good. And wow, I need the Lord so much. Even having been a Christ-follower since I was four years old, I've never understood fully this, and I'm pretty sure I still don't. Thankfully God has been patient enough with me (and loves me enough) to allow me to see how much of a screw up I am when I try to do life on my own. He's taken time to reveal to me that I am a sinner, not just a person who sins, and to begin to show me the full measure of His grace--grace that is the definition of our life in Christ.