Life seems to be a tricky maze of successes and failures. Some days are better than others. People pass the test, graduate, are hired, get promoted, have their efforts successfully acknowledged, retire and have nice things said about them at their funeral. Others make decisions which are contrary to the allowable norms of their society and pay a hefty price for their indiscretions. If you don’t get caught it doesn’t mean you got away with it, it just
means you don’t have to go to jail, yet. Someone once wrote that some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after. Likewise also the good works of some are manifest beforehand; and they that are otherwise cannot be hid.
It makes me nervous when I am around people who are openly, extremely successful. I am also a bit uncomfortable around those who appear to be overly secure in their own skin and circumstances. Mostly however, I am very disturbed by those who hold me in high esteem. These are usually people who get a very small slice of time with me and gain benefit from the experience. We each choose how we are going to respond to and interact with those we encounter. We choose to impress those we want to and to be harsher with those we don’t. We also get to hide behind the façade we create.
Here are seven of the scariest things I hear from other people. “That was marvelous” (something I did or said or whatever). “You are wonderful”. “Wow, God really uses you to get to me”. “You are so successful”. “I would really like to know you better”. “How do you always know how to say just the right thing?” “I wish I was more like you”. Now that is scary. I know me better than almost anyone knows me. I know the me they would definitely not want to be like; at least I would hope they wouldn’t. I am afraid that the more people know me the less they might think of me. The fact that God would choose to use me or any part of my life to bless someone else amazes me. Surely there are better tools in His pouch.
Let me give you a few examples of my façade. I don’t talk to my Pastor about football, complex computer configurations or knitting. Those are just not his thing. I do share some of my innermost desires and struggles with him because he cares about those things in my life. I discuss intimate things with my wife I wouldn’t share with anyone else but seldom give her details of issue from work. I wouldn’t dream of telling… Well, you get the picture. Sometimes we hide the us we don’t take pride in. Sometimes we brag about it. Yet in either case we or at least I, want to be more than I am. I not only don’t want to have my sins known, I don’t want them to be the choices I make. Someone else once said “You made your bed lie in it”. So I do. I sleep to the insecurity I have created. I also walk in it each moment I am awake.
I do consider some of the things which have happened in my short life to be amazing. God has blessed me with gifts and talents which I have used to be part of unique events, even exciting events. I have been able to help people no one else could seem to reach. God has directed my life to be far more than I could have imagined. Yet I fall far short of what I could have been. In my own view I fall far short of what and who I easily ought to be. I know that is different from what God sees. I know it is different from what others see. Yet it is what my view is. I know the right things to do and choose to do otherwise. Not just in a spur of the moment decision but in well thought out carefully deliberated ones as well. Often, afterward, I will question my own sanity and motivations. I imagine that God fearing, God honoring, born again saints of the living God ought to be able to always choose rightly.
But we don’t. Or at least I don’t. I believe based on conversations with others that we all struggle and none of us are all we ought to be. So how do we take another breathe? We claim the standard is supposed to be God’s perfection. We claim that to be true in our salvation. And we struggle with the reality of it. I am not talking about being currently overwhelmed in gross and terrible immorality. I am just being transparent about daily life choices. Selfishness and laziness are just as much sin as murder and adultery. Oh, not in the statues of our society or our morale scales of judgment but to God sin is sin. One sin is the amount which is unacceptable to be in His presence. One; that is all it takes to be out of proper fellowship with Him or judged worthy of eternal hell fire. It is not a matter of how bad or how many or how callous, but one. It is also true that it only takes one worthy payment to redeem all of the sin of all of the people who have ever existed. God gives only one caveat to that redemption, believe.
Not an easy belief which costs nothing but a belief which is externally pressed upon the heart of the soul who is incapable of believing on their own. The reality of the truth and the truth of the reality is that God dispenses faith as He a gift to those who will believe. Then He gives them an even greater gift. He gives them choice. It does not threaten His sovereignty, His power, His lordship at all to allow His highest creation the gift of choice. He already knows the outcome of the choice. He knows the impact and influence others will make on the choice of each soul. So He strategically places people and circumstances and events in our lives to allow us to make the choice He knows we will make. He does not force us to make the choice or it would not be choice. It is not completely free from influence, good or bad, but it is still choice.
I am here today writing about choice. I have made a choice to write these things about it and confess that many of the choices I have made would embarrass me beyond recovery if they were publicly known. Yet the one choice I have made which brings me joy is that I have chosen to accept His free gift of salvation. It is the only choice I desire for others to emulate. It is the only me that I want others to be like. I want others to choose to give God glory by choosing Him as their savior and sovereign.
And if it is necessary for them to see the darkest side of my poorest choices in order to give Him the greatest glory, then I want that; really. It scares me that some might want to be what Jesus has made me. I doubt my mold would fit His purpose for them. I doubt I could intellectually or emotionally properly process God’s view of me. After all I do not have that mind in me no matter how much I want to. So the best I can do is to be the best me I can be for others, that is you, to see. The best means the Godliest. The Godliest means that I confess to Him and you that I make ungodly, selfish choices which I repent of. I ask for His restoration knowing I am already forgiven by His already paid sacrifice. I repent suspecting but not expecting that I will fall short again. I choose Jesus.