Christians today seem defined by their denomination, church, and polished reputations. They walk into church with their heads held high, confident in their own self-righteousness while looking down upon those who were out partying the night before. When you walk into a restaurant on a Sunday at lunch the crowd is immediately segregated into church people and sinners. People whose lives are publicly messy and broken we add to our prayer list because “bless their hearts; we just need to pray for them” follows every gossip session about them. We’ve disassociated with the unrighteousness and sevored all ties with the friends who don’t meausure up to our holy standards.
I have been this person.
This is not Christianity.
Christianity is all about the filthiness you have done. Your deepest scars, loudest affairs, and greatest sin. It’s about bearing who you’ve been so everyone else can see who God is. Society wants us to believe if we’re open about who we’ve been or maybe even who we are that we won’t be accepted. Maybe “Christians” are those who have rejected us, as experienced by people when they walk into church after their public pregnancy scare or apparent hangover. The point is that life is not black and white. We are humans, sinners. The minute we start pretending to be Jesus, we not only turn away from him to our own righteousness, but we also turn away those looking for a glipse of hope that Christ really can cleanse any stain.
Who Christ really is? Someone who bore the pain and responsibility for your worst sin, darkest thought, most shameful event. He carried your sin on His back to the cross to pay for everything you WOULD do because He CHOSE you as His son/daughter in your ugliest moment. He chose you. Did you get that? Exactly as you are: alcoholic, prostitute, adulterer, slut. No matter how many bars you don’t remember leaving or beds you’ve crawled into looking for love, Christ says He wants you.
I have spent the majority of my life trying to earn God’s love by doing every thing I was supposed to do: go to church, don’t have sex, don’t drink alcohol. I have never experienced God’s love more than being faced with every rule I’ve broken, every blatant rebellion against God’s Word, in complete shame and brokenness, and being told by Him that He still loves me. This is grace. This is the Gospel. His blood is enough to cover you. If that’s not enough to make you cry of relief and jump for joy, you’ve missed the message.
It doesn’t stop there. He wants to break these chains for you. The searching for love by giving yourself away, you don’t need it. You are worthy. The searching for the next bottom of a bottle to numb the pain, you don’t need it. He will carry your pain for you. The constant searching for satisfaction and meaning in this life that leaves you in a bad neighborhood switching money for drugs. You don’t need it. The creator of this universe adopted you as an aire to His Kingdom. You are royalty!!! It’s time to believe it. It’s time to accept it. It’s time to act like it.
Your story is your testimony. Don’t ever be ashamed of that. You are covered in Grace and you walk in His strength. Don’t ever believe that you earned your way to His love by your own righteousness. Only Christ was perfect, next to Him, we will never measure up.
He wants to lavish His love on you today. Will you let Him?
Share your story. Get plugged into a community that will pour into you and speak life into you. Spend time falling in love with Christ in His Word. Tell others what He’s done for you.
This is Christianity.
— a sinner whose been redeemed,
KP
