Sin

Dear Friend,
How are you? Hope you had or are having a good day, today?
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In June this year, I decided to have so-called media fasting for a week.  I found myself too distracted by YouTube, online shopping and so forth.  So, for a week, I decided not to see my mobile phone & iPad, but pray in tongues, read the Bible and worship the Father.  But soon enough, I was distracted.  Once I received a new summer hat for mom from online shopping, I wanted to buy something for myself.  I even found out international shipment through Amazon doesn’t charge shipping, if it’s above US$49.9 or so. So, one evening, I spent many hours on having a look at some items I wanted to buy.  Later, I felt so guilty, as I was not even able to dedicate myself to the Lord for a week, but ended up distracted.  The next morning, when I was still lingering on my bed, I still felt guilty.  But then, I came to think that guilt is not from the Father, and it is from the focus on myself, not on the Lord.  And I knew I was already forgiven, when I repented last night. Later when I had breakfast with mom, I was thinking of Psalm 103:1~3a:
Bless the Lord, O my soul;
And all that is within me, bless His holy name!
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget not all His benefits:
Who forgives all your iniquities,

So I wanted to read Psalm 103, and opened my NKJV Bible. Lo and behold, when I opened it, the page exactly had Psalm 103. I read it, personalizing it.  Later, I wanted to read Proverbs in The Message Bible.  When I opened it, again, the page exactly had Psalm 103. I grinned.  The Father’s sense of humor.  Nothing is coincidence.  I was comforted by His goodness and I got assured that I was already forgiven.

Yet later when I still failed and felt guilty, I intentionally opened a chapter on Sin (David and Bathsheba) in Eugene Peterson’s Leap over a Wall.  I share some excerpts from it:
Nathan Preaches
The story takes a gospel turn when David’s pastor, Nathan, shows up and preaches him a sermon. At the moment David has no idea that he’s listening to a sermon, for he isn’t sitting in a pew and Nathan isn’t standing in a pulpit. There’s no explicit reference to God in the sermon, and there’s no altar call. Nathan is good at this. He stalks his prey. He tells an artless, simple story about a rich man with large flocks of sheep who needs a lamb for a dinner he’s giving. But instead of taking a lamb from his own flocks, he cruelly and arrogantly takes the pet lamb of a poor man living down the street. He kills the lamb and serves it up to his guests. David, drawn into the story, is outraged at this callous cruelty and, as a righteous judge, passes a death sentence on the rich man. Then Nathan pounces: “You are the man” (2 Sam. 12:7). 
This is the gospel focus: you are the man; you are the woman.  The gospel is never about somebody else; it’s always about you, about me.  The gospel is never a truth in general; it’s always a truth in specific.  … it’s always about actual persons, actual pain, actual trouble, actual sin: you, me; who you are and what you’ve done; who I am and what I’ve done.
… Only when I recognize and confess my sin am I in a position to recognize and respond to the God who saves me from my sin.  If I’m ignorant of or indifferent to my sin, I’m ignorant of or indifferent to the great and central good news: “Jesus saves!”
In the Christian life our primary task isn’t to avoid sin, which is impossible anyway, but to recognize sin.
… But if we stay with the story - the God story, the David story, the Jesus story - before long, the condemnation gives way, whether slowly or suddenly, to the surprised realization of grace, mercy, and forgiveness.
…. The subtlety of sin is that it doesn’t feel like sin when we’re doing it; it feels godlike, it feels religious, it feels fulfilling and satisfying - a reply of the episode in Eden when the tempter said, “Ye shall not die… ye shall be as gods” (Gen. 3:4~5, KJV) 
… Somewhere along the line he (David) had withdrawn from the life of worship: adoration of God had receded, and obsession with self had moved in.
David Prays (Psalms 51)
But before those wrongs came Sin - sin against God by setting himself at the center, displacing God…. In and through this prayer we find ourselves in a place spacious with freedom and resonant with love.  When we find ourselves before God - honestly, adoringly, believingly before God - we find our true humanity.  We’re not less but more; we’re not demeaned but dignified; we’re not condemned but saved.
David’s sin, enormous as it was, was wildly outdone by God’s grace.  … It’s always a mistake to concentrate attention on our sins; it’s God’s work on our sins that’s the main event….
We have a finite number of ways to sin; God has an infinite number of ways to forgive. 
Jesus
God is personal before us: honest, open, receptive.  This personal God is facing and taking care of my personal sin, making me right with God…. 
The place of sin is a place not of accusation or condemnation but of salvation.  The gospel comes into focus here not in an accusation but as recognition and invitation.  Recognition: I’m the one whose sense of sin arouses a sense of God.  Invitation: Jesus is the one who presents God to me - I didn’t know God was that close, that kindly, that inviting! - and brings me into personal relationship with him in love and salvation. I’m the one who needs God more than anything - more than pleasure with Bathsheba, more than control over Uriah.  God. And Jesus is the one who brings the God I need to me.

Later in this fall, God dealt with my sin in a very personal way. When I sin, I tend to hide it by not talking about it to Him, but I feel uncomfortable in my heart.  I thought of Adam and Eve’s hiding away after they ate the forbidden fruit. Then, I found He dealt with me, by showing me something in my daily life as metaphor.  When I saw that three times, I realized it was the Lord’s talking to me.  He was actually showing me how I would cut off idolatry (anything between Him and me), using irritating bugs in my place.  Just like Eugene Peterson wrote, God is that close, that kind, that inviting. And He brought me into personal relationship in love and salvation. I didn’t feel condemned but I need His mercy and salvation. In fact, He reminded me of another book of Eugene Peterson on the well-known verses from Lamentation:
“Where did Jeremiah learn his persistence? … He learned it from God. 
Jeremiah learned to live persistently toward God because God lived persistently toward him. The five poem-prayers in Lamentation (written in the tradition of Jeremiah) express the suffering God’s people experienced during and after the fall of Jerusalem, the most devastating disaster in their history. At the very center of this dark time, and placed at almost the exact center of these five poems that lament the sin and suffering, there is this verse: ‘God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out, his merciful love couldn’t have dried up. They’re created new every morning. How great your faithfulness!’ (Lam 3:23).
There it is - ‘new every morning… great is your faithfulness.’ God’s persistence is not a dogged repetition of duty. It has all the surprise and creativity, and yet all the certainty and regularity, of a new day. Sunrise - when the spontaneous and the certain arrive at the same time. 
Does anyone ever get used to daybreak? .. Daybreak is always a surprise. … If the repetitions in nature are never boring, how much less the repetitions in God.” (From Run with the Horses)
His mercy is new every morning. This verse hit home, as if I read and realized what it meant for the first time. No matter what sin I committed, His mercy is new every morning. Not only to me, but to you. Our sins were forgiven, as He is full of mercy and His mercy is new every morning.  And I also realized that our love toward spouse, parent, child and so on should be new every morning, just like His loyal love doesn’t run out, but is created new every morning.

​Friend, we all sin. Your sin might be different from mine, but we all sin.  That is why our Lord Jesus came to earth in human body, to save us. I pray you and I may see His mercy new every morning and be merciful and faithful to one another. Amen.

Merry Christmas to you & your family! Have a bliss!
Julie

When Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” (Mark 2:17)