Last Christmas was one of those rare perfect days that crop up every so often. There were just the six of us from my family and a guy from church and his girlfriend but it was a time of happiness, laughter, presents, good food and my brother failing to be good at yet another board game. It was one of those memories that are worth treasuring away.
It stands out in particular because in the months that followed I went through some pretty dark times as God and I had a few difficulties to sort out. By that I naturally mean that all the difficulties lay with me and I have quite a number of memories of days when continuing the Christian walk just seemed so pointless, days when I reached out for God and couldn’t find him, dark days, painful days because it felt like my God had forsaken me. It struck me that this pretty much sums up life. There is so much happiness to be had in this world and so much grief as well. It is hard to meet anyone who is a stranger to suffering, it is hard to meet anyone who has not known times when they hurt more than they thought possible. So we have this dichotomy that runs throughout a man’s life and his very being: such more good, so much evil and pain.
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There are moments in life when a particular truth about God hits home harder than it normally does. One such moment happened to me today. Whilst I was praying I was pondering the goodness of God towards me and how underserved it was and suddenly for a few seconds I beheld a measure of the fullness of the infinite goodness of God and it was too much. I had to recoil not because I did not like what I was thinking of, far from it, precisely the opposite was true, God became too wonderful to comprehend, his beauty was too great for my eyes, his love to vast to fathom, his glory beyond tracing out.
And it called to mind a passage in Isaiah which runs as follows: “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” Isaiah 6 v 1 - 7 As you may have noticed I bang on a lot about Reformed theology and the doctrines of grace and if you don’t know what I’m talking about click here and prepare to have the way you think of God overturned. But why do I think it matters? What’s so vitally important about it? Why do I care? It’s not because I think reformed Christians are better than others for I’ve met too many people who aren’t and yet walk so closely with Christ. One of the biggest benefits of the Christian Union is meeting a lot of people who I disagree with theologically speaking yet put me to shame for my lacklustre walk with God. It’s not because I think that you’re a bad Christian if you’re not reformed. And it’s not because I want everyone to agree with the Ben Mildred Way of Looking at Things. No, it’s something greater than all these.
A few months ago Rob Bell released a book called ‘Love Wins’. It was widely regarded as being somewhat heretical. He goes wrong for me in the title; not that it’s not a wonderful statement of truth for love does indeed win but because it emphasises the wrong thing. Personally, and I don’t want to press this too much, I prefer to say that is not just love that wins it is Christ who wins.
Christ wins. Because, well, he does, all the time. Jesus Christ has never failed. This is an amazing truth and one that is hard to grasp at the same time. After all, he was executed as a criminal of a cross, surely this was Christ losing? Except we know that in dying on the cross and his resurrection from the dead Christ won victory over sin and death. As Paul writes: “Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”
Revelation 20 v 11 – 15 When you face God on the Day of Judgement what are you going to say to him? What defence will you use to justify yourself before him? What line will you take? What angle will you go for? Maybe you’ll excuse yourself by saying that you never believed in God. But standing before him saying that is going to sound a little pathetic. Maybe you’ll try and point to all the good deeds you have done and how you are too good a person to go to Hell. But when faced with absolute, perfect and infinite holiness of God you’re deeds are going to be thrown into sharp relief. It had been on my mind for quite some time that was something about the Christian faith I just wasn’t getting. That is to say I understood well my complete brokenness before God, I grasped more fully than I had before the extent, depth and width of my sinfulness. I got that I was a sinner. That point was clear. I got as well that my heart was wayward, idolatrous and proud. To a large degree I could cry “What wretched man I am” and mean it. My heart was cold towards God and I was unmoved by what I knew should move me. And so I prayed about it. I asked God that he would teach me what I need to learn.
It never occurred to me that the very thing I needed to learn was nothing less than the very gospel that saved me. But I’ll get to that in a minute. First let me quote from Jerry Bridges’ book “The Disciplines of Grace”. There is nothing more beautiful than a broken man weeping before God.
Why is the man weeping? He weeps because he is broken and he weeps because he is before God and that throws his brokenness into even sharper relief. He weeps because he has become aware of the greater extent of sin in his life and that he has indeed fallen short of the glory of God. He weeps because of the ungodliness within him, he cries out for his faith is weak and he does not think of God as he should. He weeps because he desires with a burning passion to rejoice in God and this desire is unfulfilled and the joy that should be so abundant is absent. He is broken because he is so self centred and thinks not of others and his prayers and thoughts revolve himself instead of his God. He weeps because the darkness seems strong and he has fallen. He is broken and knows that he is unworthy. And he weeps for he is not as obedient to God as he should be and the idols of his heart bear a heavy price on his soul. His heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Why is the man weeping? He weeps because above all else he remembers the words of his God: “The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul…Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Psalm 23 v 1 – 4 Whenever I read or recall the above verse to mind I also remember a story I once heard. It was about a Jewish Christian who had lived in Germany during World War II. He lost everything. He lost his family business, home and wealth. He was put in a Concentration Camp and lost his good health and became a starved and ill man. And he had to watch his wife and children die before him. But he survived. And someone was speaking to him about his experience and asked him how he managed to hold it all together. His reply struck me and has continues to do so since. He said with tears streaming down his cheeks: “It is only when you lose everything that you realize that Christ is all you need”
The storm clouds of life were heavy and dark, the wind raged, the waves tossed and the future seemed bleak. My prayers were empty words devoid of comfort, the Bible held no help, my sins towered over me, my lack of faith and love for God weighed my soul down and it all was too much. My strength, pitiful as it was, was spent; my courage had deserted me and God seemed so very far away. He seemed to be deaf to my pleas and all was lost. I was perplexed and in despair, sorrowful and not rejoicing, confused and baffled by God’s providence. My own understanding failed me and hope was too distant a concept to grasp. The path before me was dark and crooked, my soul was downcast and my thoughts troubled.
And I suffered the temptation to quit. To give up and walk away from all that I did. I’d toss in the towel and leave God and Christianity behind me. It was too heavy a burden to bear, too much for my feeble frame, too hard, too painful, I couldn’t do it. And yet, and yet no sooner had I entertained this thought when a barrier in my mind slammed into place. I couldn’t quit. It became impossibility itself and every fibre of my being rejected the temptation and turned back to God. Who else was there to turn to? |
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