…I mean it could be you, but I’m gonna let God sort it out because He’s the only one who knows for sure.

I was given a book the other day.  I’m not going to share what it was just yet.  But it made me think a little more about some things that I’ve thought over the years.  A lot about the way I have thought about things in relation to the churches I’ve been a part of in a leadership capacity and as a fellow lay minister at times.

Let me first say publicly, I am sorry.  Now, I know that on it’s own doesn’t really seem to make much sense, but let me share a little about why I am sorry.  I’ve often been critical of leadership in churches.  I’ve never been public about these criticisms.  It’s been more of an internal struggle about how I should submit to the authority of someone who in my opinion wasn’t submitting to God themselves.  I may have outwardly done all the right things, but often internally I’ve struggled when I have seen churches do things at the bidding of their pastors or ministers that has been contrary to what I believe God wanted.  Often, I believe that feeling may have been folly.  Not because the ministers or pastors were right, but because in my mind I tried to judge how God was leading them to lead.

Granted, I didn’t act on it in an outward fashion.  I’ve thought about it.  I’ve laid schemes in my head hundreds of times about how I would do things differently.  How I would change things if “I were in charge”.

I think one of the greatest gifts God has given me is a short attention span.  I entertain ideas and move onto things very fast.  I don’t hold grudges because I often forget why I am holding grudges in the first place.  So I think that has been beneficial to me in the past for avoiding the types of conflict I otherwise would have found myself in.

But here is the point.

I have been blessed by God in the sense that He has kept me from personal ruin thus far because of the way that He created me.  I don’t think God has shielded me for my own sake though.  I think He has protected ministries from me more often than He has given me authority because He knew that it was beyond me to be the leader that He wanted me to be.  I won’t dare claim brokenness.  I also won’t claim that I have been chastened to the point that I am the ultimate embodiment of who God wants me to be.  I will claim instead, Christ.

I don’t understand Jesus. I don’t get Him at times.  I sin.  I fall short at times.  If someone were looking to me for guidance and an example, I hope they don’t check their brains at the door and forget that I am fallible.

I claim Christ because of grace.  This is the thing that separates Christianity from all other faiths.  The fact that a perfect God could love an imperfect people and give Himself up for them.  I guess this is why I don’t feel that I “belong” to a particular denomination. I belong to Christ.  No General Superintendent of whatever conference took my sin.  Jesus took it.  Often we could fight all day about open communion or closed communion, but ultimately it doesn’t come down to a ritual practice.  It comes down to a relationship between us & God, and our relationship with people who though fallen, were created in His image.  How I treat those people in my thoughts regardless of whether they are right or not, reveals how I am also treating God.

I know often I am blinded to the spiritual element of life. I go day to day thinking that things could be coincidence or just random events conspiring against me. I forget that we are at war. It”s not that I don’t believe that I am at war for my soul, it’s that the way this war is waged is not by physical weapons. It’s thoughts and feelings and nudges of both demonic influences and my own sinful nature that are working against God in my life.

All we get out of sin is death and destruction.

Sure, sins seem nice when they are happening. We even try to justify them a thousand different ways. But what it ultimately comes down to is that God is God. He is the one who decides if something is sin or not. In fact God even holds Himself up as the standard of Truth and righteousness.

If there is question about it, stay away.

It gets me that some argue that certain things are not sin because it’s part of their genetic makeup. I find it amazing that they have come to that conclusion because scripture tells us we have a problem called “sinful nature”. I won’t deny it.

• I am likely to speed every time I drive, so I use the cruise control to keep myself in check.
• My mother was an alcoholic, therefore I stay away from beer.

It’s really that simple.  I realize that I am prone to a certain sin so I take more measures against it. Sin is still part of our nature though. Often, those sins we are most likely to commit are also the ones that we are most aware of actually being sin and are the ones we usually fight most vehemently that they are not.

The opposite of rebellion is repentance.

Once we are aware of our sin, we can accept God’s grace. Repentance means humbling yourself and turning around and going the other way when you realize you were wrong. Rebellion is going the way you know is wrong knowing it is wrong.

Sin and the Church.

Unfortunately, many people who attend church have gotten it backwards. Church is a gathering of sinners who recognize their own depravity and want to be in community with other people seeking out the way of repentance. So the church can be divided in several categories of people.

• Those who recognize their own depravity and are somewhere in the process of turning away from it and seeking God.
• Those who think they have it all figured out and so waste their time by telling those who are seeking God where they think He is.
• Those who are delusional that their particular brand of sin is somehow acceptable to God and are seeking the acceptance of the church to somehow justify themselves.
• Those who really don’t care one way or the other so they go with whatever the majority thinks.

I’m a mess, you’re a mess, we’re all a mess.

Not to sound like an AA meeting, but we are all sinners and we have to come to recognize that fact first. You don’t have to justify it to me because God’s the one who has set the standard.