Sometimes we can get it into our heads that we're too far gone - that the wilful way we live our lives makes us totally unacceptable to God. That God only wants the 'perfect' ones - the ones so much higher than us! The ones who get it right - and make us look and feel so fallen in comparison. Those goody-goodies who we 'know' have earned a place in his 'good books', and have his nod to enter heaven in the afterlife. If we only knew how much those people struggle too...
There are many stories in the Bible of broken and very imperfect people - after all, this world is full of them!!! Unlike most of us, their brokenness is recorded there for us all to see! Sordid stories of people who knew better, giving in to evil thoughts and desires. And these are people who are supposed to be God's!!
David was one of these people - lusting after another man's wife and arranging for his death so that he could have her. And yet, somehow, God still called him a man after his own heart!!! (1 Samuel 13:14) I am honestly deeply grateful for stories like his. He messed up worse than most of us ever do! - and yet God did not turn his back on him! Instead, he confronted him with the evil he'd done, and the consequences that would come with it. And David was deeply convicted with the awfulness of what he had done, and sought after God's forgiveness with everything in him. And God gave it to him! And continued to work with him! And because of the desperate seeking of David's heart to be God's and follow his way - which he knew to be perfect and good - God still saw him as "a man after my own heart ".
That story, and others like it, give me courage to continue in my walk with God!! Even when I've messed up - big time!!! They tell me that God still wants me!!! That I can leave that ugliness in my past and keep clinging to and being changed by him!! The prostitutes he loved and used!!! The thunderous tempers he transformed!! God reaches the world through imperfect lives!! And constantly calls them to more beautiful living!! And because of the records of their ugly imperfections on display for all of us, I can believe that he can still love me and want me - despite all I am and am not.
Thank God for the torrid stories in the Bible. Because of them, I don't think I'm too far gone for him to want me.
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