'God have mercy on me a sinner.." Luke 18:13
Well, I have been challenged at the moment about authenticity - is who i project who i am. If not, why not. Is it fear that people will judge me, is it a desire for acceptance, is it that what i want to be and what i think i should be are 2 diferent things... well all of the above and more. You might have got a bit of that journey (i expect it will be a life work), from previous posts.
I guess I want to just say that I had a great session of confession and repentance (great as in it allowed God and people in to minister to crap that goes on.) But it was hard - step of faith. And i felt free at the end. Forgiven. Accepted. It was the right group of people. There was honesty and trust. And the people there could not only listen, but pray God's truth into me so I could continue forward.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone. It maybe that Christians, not withstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship of service, may be left alone in their loneliness. The final breakthough to fellowship does not occur because, though they have fellowship with oneanother as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be sinners. So everyone must conceal his sin from himself and from their fellowship (and even from God). We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is we are sinners!”
So today i feel less alone. And thank you Ben for prompting this ... and Tam and Helen for providing the confessional. :0
And now I have to get my head around the fact that I am simultaeneously a saint!
posted by me @ 7:19 PM
11 Comments:
Hi Rhea,
And actually hi Ben if you read this. Rhea and I have been inspired by Megan and your blogs, and journeys and truthfulness. So thank you.
Rhea, I love this paragraph. It’s kind of the chicken and the egg. Do we not want to confess our sins because church/other christians are so pious, or is church pious because we don’t confess our sins? What’s so amazing about grace was a breakthrough for me. I ended up seriously amazed by grace. Does god seriously love me not matter what? He won’t love me more if I’m perfect, and less if I stuff up? Well I guess if we don't treat each other like this, why would anyone including me believe it of God?
Helen
Rhea--wow. thankyou for sharing. Loneliness sucks, and it's antidote does the opposite of suck, to the same degree! Mark Laaser said in all his work with addicts (...that is, sinners, (this analogy works well for me, anyway)), he found that the only thing more powerful than the external (alcohol, coke, heroin, methamphetamines, food, sex, etc.) and internal (dopamines, ephinephrine, endorphins, etc.) drugs that we turn to to escape the pain (and thus become *deader*) is reality based connection with other people. and this connection is an order of magnitude stronger than all those other things (which are mighty powerful in themselves) (I'm freely paraphrasing Mark here).
helen--the thing about me is that I have no trouble with god--I mean believing he exists, and relating to him (well, I mean if you don't count anger and confusion as trouble). I just don't get the Jesus/Bible thing. my god (the one I most recently hired) is a lot different from Jesus/the god of the bible. He's a hell of a lot nicer. and he is embodies all the nicest ways that people treat me. he embodies all the best and good, and isn't anything like nor part of all the shitty bad stuff. (ok, wait a minute--something is seriously untrue about what I just said. Can't see *what* clearly yet. hmmmmmm.)
I love this bit from Brennan Manning's The Ragamuffin Gospel :
'The Good News means we can stop lying to ourselves. The sweet sound of amazing grace saves us from the necessity of self-deception. It keeps us from denying that though Christ was victorious, the battle...still rages within us. As a sinner who has been redeemed, I can acknowledge that I am often unloving, irritable, angry and resentful with those closest to me. When I go to church I can leave my white hat at home and admit that I have failed. God not only loves me as I am, but also knows me as I am... As C.S. Lewis says in The Four Loves, "Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our need, a joy in total dependence. A good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his need. He is not entirely sorry for the fresh need they have produced." '
hi em - always able to pull winner quotes - do you have an inner nerd ? he he!
helena, good point. i feel both are true. i feel the burden of church not being the open place jesus expected it to be because of my own piousness (to use your term). other stuff feels out of my control. it seems i can only change me ... bugger.
hey ben.. Nothing to add there ... except i would add (hmmm!) God into that category of reality based connections that surpass all else - often entwined in practice with other people (its late - do i make sense). i like the difference because as you say drugs etc numb pain and relationships help you live with / deal with the pain. hmm more food for thought ... reminds me of CS Lewis's quote (unlike Emma, I can never find him when i need him) that there are no ordinary mortals! People are sacred and holy ...
Have you decided which bit of what you said about 'God' was untrue?
my inner-nerd (which certainly exists) is here to provide the quote you're after:
"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption, and our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feelings for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriement..." The Weight of Glory
emma one of the most defining moments in my life was reading 'the weight of glory' wiht you and justin in our little 'staff meeting!' - it wasn;t just the words on the page that wowed me, but people i was reading it with kind of cemented that the words i was reading were true!
nope. still can't see it. It looks ok now. but usually those first impressions have *something* in them that maybe doesn't come out until much later. hmmmm.
At first I was guessing that Helen was someone I know named Helen, but now I'm guessing it's a different Helen. Nice to meet you Helen!
why do people put the strange word verification thing on their blogs? I don't have it, and I've never had any robots leaving comments on my blog (and I'd be kind of chuffed if they did)...
ironically i put the word verification on, and i usually get it wrong at least once each time i try and make a post. It's my daily idiot test for myself
Hi to all,
I'm guessing that the 'bloggathon' on this topic may have passed me by....but as a participator in the 'great confession' I felt like I needed to reflect for a while before posting my thoughts...so here goes.
You know the crazy thing about being human is that in some respects, we are all the same -we all sin and we would all rather ignore the fact that we do sin. So sin ends up being the big white elephant hovering above our relationship with God and in our relationships with other people. But it doesn't have to!
A few weeks have passed since our night of confession and prayer and can I just say that I feel totally blessed and refreshed both in my relationship with God and in my relationships with the two other gals who had enough guts to admit that they are not perfect either!
So to those of you out there thinking "not sure if that whole confession thing is for me" then have a read of the end of James and trust that God will bless you (and find the right group of people to speak to!).
PS Hi Ben - I too have read your comments on the J-Man's New York blog....can I just say I'd really like to meet your God is and then introduce you to Jesus....because I just find it so hard to believe that you could find someone "nicer" (your word, not mine) than Jesus.
Post a Comment
<< Home