I hated it!
I would read where she couldn't see me, and if I heard her moving about, I would think to myself, "please, don't let her come in here and find me, pleeease". Even those tense moments, when I would almost hold my breath, were rain on my party. I wanted to be left alone to do what I wanted, free even of the fear of being discovered.
When the Spirit pricks my conscience, I am a little annoyed, to say the least, at His persistent interference with my pursuits. My flesh wants to be left alone, and my pride pouts at being judged, at being told to stop doing what I like. I try to brush away the Spirit as if it were a bothersome mosquito buzzing in my ear. I want to silence the conviction because guilt is annoying; it makes me feel bad about myself. I want to return to thinking positive things about me, return to freedom from guilt and shame, return to feeling good about me again.
We humans would like to be left alone to do as we please without any consequences, without unwelcome interference, without anyone making us feel guilty for doing what we want. We are offended by our "judgers and punishers". Their judgment and punishment annoyingly break up our pursuit of happiness. In fact, just knowing that someone can judge us is enough to take the fun out of our self-centered pursuits and make us angry. We would like to be left alone to feel good about ourselves, to feel confident and strong.
So naturally, we're tempted to hide from the Spirit. We look for a private place to lick our wounds and indulge in our pleasures. After awhile, when we feel a little better and our wounds of regret don't sting quite as badly, we'll sheepishly open the door a crack to see if the coast is clear. Full of positive thoughts that this time will be better, "this time I'll succeed", we tip-toe back out and hope that all has blown away, that no one noticed our absence, that we can move on as if nothing has happened. We feel ready now, feel strong enough to do this. Our confidence is back and we think "this is who I really am."
Maybe God won't notice the fig leaves I'm wearing.
As far as I can tell, Herman Melville was not a religious man, yet he writes a chapter he titles "The Sermon" in his whaling tale called "Moby Dick". In this sermon, his preacher character, Father Mapple, tells an imaginative version of Jonah's experience in the Bible, a very appropriate choice for a whaling ship. He concludes his sermon with this:
"Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish’s belly. But observe his prayer, and learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment."
Remember that look from mom or dad when you had gone too far? Suddenly, you've been grabbed by the arm and you start pleading "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry", hoping that they will have pity on you. You are too busy clamoring for pardon to even think about repenting.
Imagine if you came to your mom or dad, punishment in hand, and said "thank you".
"Repentance does not cause a sense of sin - it causes a sense of inexpressible unworthiness. When I repent, I realize that I am absolutely helpless, and I know that through and through I am not worthy even to carry His sandals. Have I repented like that, or do I have a lingering thought of possibly trying to defend my actions? Get to the end of yourself where you can do nothing, but where He does everything."
Oswald Chambers
You just blew it.
Maybe you lost your temper, yelled at your kids, lied to your boss or parents, looked at porn, got jealous, whatever it was, you blew it. What now? You might feel sorry, mostly because you've embarrassed yourself, exposed yourself to the possibility that others will think less of you, so you retreat to your sulking room where you alternate between convincing yourself that you aren't that bad, fretting about what others think, giving reasons for your lapse of perfection, saving face or beating yourself up for having failed to keep it all together. Wasn't it just two days ago that you said you weren't ever going to do that again?
Too often we retreat until the bad feeling passes, when we should turn to God and admit defeat. Like the prodigal son who comes to his senses, we should drop the slop and return to the Father, broken and humble.
Retreating is easier than accepting defeat, but it doesn't produce any real change of heart. That's why we so often find ourselves repeating the same sins over and over again.
To pick up your cross you have to put something else down.
Put down your rebellion.
Put down your sin.
Put down your pride.
Put down that thing you refuse to give up.
Put down those other loves.
To walk in the Spirit you have to put it down and turn around.
Repentance is turning yourself around and standing before the One greater than you, the One who has the right to judge you, and saying, "Here I stand Lord, wretchedly out of reach, with no hope of crossing over to You, here I stand in the stench of my filthy rags of sin. What an offensive mess I would bring into Your presence! No Lord! I am undone, I have sinned against you, and you are right to call me out on it, right to punish me for it."
True repentance sees my sin as He sees it, without trying to justify it. True repentance acknowledges God's perfect justice and rightness in punishing my sin, abandoning all hope of being able to 'make things right' and throwing myself on God's grace and mercy. True repentance recognizes that I am hopeless to recover in any way from my sin, making my appeal based on who God is, not on anything that I have done.
True repentance is action.
It's bending down in submission to accept the cross that identifies you with Christ.
It's dying to self, it's freedom from sin, and it's every step of walking in the Spirit.
Great title!!
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