Caution: My attempt to make this short has failed. This is four Microsoft Word pages worth of a blog. It might take some time to read. That being said, I believe God has put this on my heart for a reason. Do with it what you will.
Hi all, Tim here. As I am sitting here in a cabin in beautiful Winter Park, CO, in a bath robe drinking tea, looking out over the snowy mountains, I thought this was a totally appropriate time to sit back and search my mind for some words of wisdom to share. But since there isn't too much wisdom up there, I'll just share a little bit with you guys about what God has been teaching me since I've been at college. Man, get me started on this topic and I might never quit, but I'll do my best. Thankfully for me, and all you friends reading this, God has been leading me and teaching me in a very specific way, so this shouldn't be complete chaos of thought.
Grace. I'm not sure if there is a word more commonly used but poorly understood among most in the church. For 18 years of church, through 8 years of youth group, small groups, many deep conversations, even through years of leading worship, and "leading" others in a walk with Christ (really hope no one followed me too closely, not sure where exactly I would have lead them), I have never had any idea of what the power of God's grace actually meant. Sure, I've had extremely high moments with my Father and King, and I knew, like any church goer, that "Jesus died so that our sins could be forgiven". Which is great, that means that when I die, all the stupid things I did are all taken care of, and when I'm standing in the courtroom, I'll have Jesus as my lawyer to make sure I'm declared "innocent".
dumb
dumb
dumb
dumb
dumb.
This year, I've learned something extremely important.
I'm an idiot.
And I don't have the tiniest understanding of my God, the God that rules over the universe, and is more magnificent than any mind could ever imagine. See, I used to think I did understand. And that was the clearest sign that my faith was not in who God actually is, but rather who I decided he was. And this year, He has began to painfully break that down, to create room in my heart for Him to speak some actual truth into.
So let me try and discuss this a little bit. Sin, grace, and the love of a perfect Father.
Not sure if you guys knew this, but...I sin a lot. And this fact has always eaten at me. I lead worship, I talk to people about God and the "freedom from sin" that He provides, people look up to me...I shouldn't sin as much as I do! And God must see this too, he must hold me to a higher standard because of my leadership positions, because of how long I've been a Christian, because of how much of a "holy" image I try to make for myself. So, with this mindset, my life has become a pattern of trying to impress God and prove my worth, closely followed by failing, disappointing God, and then shamefully wandering around in self-judgement. I mean I knew God has grace and would forgive me, but come on, after so many times of letting Him down (looking back at my arrogance is almost humorous), He's got to eventually get tired of me withdraw His offer from me. I knew about the truth of His forgiveness, but in my post-sin darkness (a little place, or state of mind, that I regularly visited), I felt like there was no possible way that I could accept His grace, because I've already taken so much from "Tim's Grace Account", and it was surely starting to run dry. I would try with everything I had to repent from all my sin, because maybe without all that sin, I could accept God's grace (or more truthfully, because then people would see how holy I was, or how much I loved God).
And that is where I was when, according to God's perfect timing, He started to pull off my blindfold to reveal his truth to me. There were many things that God surrounded me with here at school to teach me about His grace to break down my walls so that he could actually reveal it to me. One major thing being a class called A Community of Ragamuffins, and
The Ragamuffin Gospel that we read for the class. (READ THAT BOOK). The fact that God has even opened my eyes enough to see my screwed up perception for what it is, is a miracle in itself. But the fact that he has allowed me to see so much truth is what amazes me. One huge truth that really hit home with me is that "repentance cannot lead to grace, but it is true grace that leads to repentance". If I try to repent with the goal being to earn, or to prove worthiness of grace, my repentance will never be true and will ALWAYS fail. But when I am captured by the wonder of God's true grace, the only possible response is to surrender everything and submit completely to Him in amazement. Think about it. The tiniest glimpse of God's glory is enough to drop you to your knees, lay you out flat on your back, and you lay there wondering what the heck just happened, and no words can possibly describe it. At that point, do you think you'll be thinking about
trying not to sin? Seek GOD for who He is, not your own repentance and the grace you think you earn through that.
I've just been realizing how much we tend to put way too much focus and stress on our own sin, and hardly any on God's grace. Another quote that caught me was "where sin is abundant, grace is always more abundant" (the Tim Rendall, modified from memory version). I mean if that statement is true, what's more important? Why do we always always focus more on the lesser of the two than we do on the greater? I think when we are encouraging someone else who is discouraged from sin, we do focus more on God's grace for that person more than condemning them for their sin, but that is definitely not been the case when examining my own life, maybe you guys are with me on that. I'm always thinking about how I can overcome the sin in my life, justifying it by saying I want to give God control of my life. But is that actually giving God control....or is that me trying to take control myself and earn my own salvation? I'm sure we can all identify at least a couple "major sins" in our lives, sin that we give most of our attention, in an struggle to tame that sin. Let's say one day, we successfully overcome that sin, and it no longer is a part of our lives. Are we any closer to being able to earn salvation by our own deeds? Even if we overcome a single sinful struggle in our lives, that's like removing one or two grains of sand from the beach. Don't get me wrong, I think defeating sin by the power of God is something to rejoice about. but I still think we need to realize that it is not the sin or lack of sin that decides our salvation, either way, it is ONLY God's grace that saves us.
I think there are two ways to handle the sin in our lives: we can be ashamed of it, because "someone like me should not be sinning in this way"...we could try and hide it, thinking maybe one day we'll defeat it, and no one will have to know it was ever a problem. In this way, our own image and glory and greatness is magnified to others, but the presence of grace in our lives is made so minuscule, if even present at all. We are saying, "Yes God has grace for us all, but I hardly even need it because of how good I am".
OR
we could be completely open about who we really are, almost even bragging about our sin, because in that way, by taking off our crowns and making ourselves known as the scum that we are, God becomes the amazing God that He is, whose grace is so incredible that He can take someone like
me and give me purpose like I've never felt before. That's a God I want and need, and I think that's the God others want as well.
He said he came not for the righteous, but for the sinners. I seem to always forget this, and convince myself that I need to make myself righteous in order to deserve his grace, and I try to make others believe that I am deserving of his grace.
What if we all just stopped trying to make ourselves worthy of God's love and grace, and just accepted it for the GIFT that it is?
Friends, my brain has now exploded and I can no longer organize my thoughts enough to make any kind of sense anymore. So I'll leave it at that. If you've read this whole thing, thank you for letting me share my thoughts. I said this blog wouldnt turn into chaos....haha, sorry. And maybe I'm alone in all this, but I have a feeling someone else might have needed to hear this as I did.
So, let's stop preaching the gospel of how well we can follow God's commands, and start preaching the Gospel that even though we do everything deserving of death, and have become completely unlovable, HE loves us, and HE wants to use us. All He wants is for us to stop making his grace something it isn't, and except it for what it is.
"But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."
- 2 Cor. 12:19
In love and truth, revealed to me by my Father,
Tim, a porn addict, loved and saved.
