Day 2838 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Luke 17:32 NIV

Stuck. Frozen. Cemented in this eternal middle ground where all we have is a reminder of a doomed past we’re not going back to and the dream of a hopeful future that we’ll sadly never experience.

You see, that’s what we get by wasting all this time worrying about all these feelings of unworthiness. We get stuck in the middle. We find ourselves being led to the hopeful realization of a salvation we don’t deserve, but still somehow unwilling or unable to let go of the disaster that we’ve created behind us. It’s like we have this innate sense of responsibility to clean up the mess we’ve made of our life so far. We feel this responsibility to maybe fix it somehow so that we feel better about the gift we’ve been given through the cross.

I guess we don’t want to feel humbled by God giving us a gift that our old lives clearly don’t deserve. Or maybe we don’t want to feel obligated to feel grateful. Or maybe we still just don’t understand how all those mistakes we’ve made can truly be wiped away. Whatever the reason, we just need to get over it and understand that our salvation is a gift that we could have never earned even if we could go back and do things differently. We’ve been born into sin, and it’s become a close companion along our journey.

There is no way to fix what we’ve messed up. We have to stop looking back trying to figure out a way to do so.

Feeling unworthy of salvation is sadly commonplace. We know our mistakes. We know the sins and shortcomings that lie within the wake of the lives we've lived. We realize that we are deeply flawed and therefore carry this deep realization that all we really deserve is to be six feet deep, buried under the way we chose to live our lives. We know who we've been, what we've done, what we've chosen to see and watch and become. We know it all because we lived it. We built it.

We, at the time, did all of those things and built all of those dreams out of all the desires that we either couldn't or wouldn't or simply didn't want to look beyond. We made the choices, and the scary thing about choices is that we know there were other options. We know that we could have done things differently. We realize that all of the stupid mistakes we made were a result of our refusal to opt for the more intelligent and upstanding path. We look back and see destruction looming behind us, and sadly enough, we know we should be caught up in it because we lit the match that sparked the fuse that brought it down.

We've been talking about all this time we waste feeling unworthy of God's love rather than humbly accepting it along with the fact that we couldn't earn it anyway. We get stuck looking at who we've been rather than the wide-open life that has been given to us up ahead. We keep on turning back to see what's behind. We, for whatever reason, likely shame or regret or anger or something akin, simply refuse to accept the fact that we've been given a do-over.

And yet, oddly enough, that's what we've long prayed to find. Not at first. When we first began down the road of sin, it was everything we wanted. It brought us to everything we desired. That wide and easy and common path led us to lives filled with our every single want and wish. But somewhere along the line, the facade started giving way. The appeal started to crack. The painted-up surface gave way to the lies that existed below. And as we foolishly continued onward, we started seeing more and more of what was really going on.

Then we got it. Or at least we got part of it. We arrived at this place where all we wanted wasn't all we thought it would be. We realized that while we could continue living in sin and chasing those highs, it was becoming harder to ignore the lows. It was becoming harder to escape the feelings of shame and regret. And those heavy feelings simply suck! And so we finally found the courage to hit our knees and take a chance that this Jesus guy is really out there somewhere, and that for some reason, He remains willing to hear our words even after all those years spent refusing to acknowledge His.

We began looking for a second chance. We could no longer drown out the longing of our lost and hurting souls begging for something better than the darkness which was all we ever found. We finally found the ability to admit that we got it wrong, and maybe even more importantly, that we couldn't fix it. We built this crumbling house on sinking sand and were simply radically unable to steady the destruction that was beginning to unfold.

But then, we got it. We got help. We found hope. We saw this image of a cross being thrown to us as a life-saving floatation device which was graciously tossed our way to save us from sinking in the muck we'd created. But then our stupidity reared its ugly face all over again. We just let it sit there. We let it float just in front of us, unwilling to reach out and accept the help we've been offered because of this remaining sense of pride that tells us that since we created the mess, we belong in it.

I talked yesterday about the Stockholm syndrome that we've all found in our sinful ways. We've found a home in the darkness that, while not good enough and nowhere close to what we want now that we know better, we know we deserve. We know we've earned it. We know that our sins owe a death and having lived so long so wrong, we should have nothing good to look forward to let alone actually hope and believe in.

And so we find ourselves much like Lot's wife. We're stuck in this middle ground. We're caught up in the reality of our present situation. We're glued somewhere in the middle of what's behind us and what we've been given up ahead. We've literally been shown that God is trying to lead us away from the incoming disaster, but it's like we feel this need to just be destroyed so that we don't have to keep teetering on this edge between who we've been and the hope that something could change.

To say that we've gotten this wrong and made it all much harder than it ever needed to be is a wild understatement. It's a gift! Christ's salvation is a gift. And the thing about being given a gift is that we're not the ones who decide to give it, and we therefore have no say in whether or not it's given. Christ chose to die for us. His reasons are His alone. We may not feel like we deserve it. We will likely never feel like we deserve it. But our feelings and misunderstandings, and simply failures to come anywhere close to understanding, have no sway in His decision.

He made His choice to bear our cross and give His life as a ransom for our own. Why do we keep dredging up these reminders of who we’ve been and what we’ve done as if we’re trying to make sure He really wants to do what He’s already done? Why do we keep reliving what He left buried?

It's like we think we can just ask Him to take it all back simply because we can't seem to let go of the guilt. "Hey Jesus, I still feel really bad, really ashamed, and so, why don't you just hit rewind and skip all that hard stuff since I can't seem to hear the message above the noise of the shame that's calling my name." What are we doing? We asked for help. We prayed for change. We begged God to forgive us and give us a second chance, a fresh start, a new beginning. AND HE DID!! Where is the confusion?

He chose to forgive us. He fulfilled our desperate prayer for forgiveness. So the fact that we still feel this need to be punished for the sins that we've done in the past shows that we've not fully accepted the salvation that we prayed for. Why can't we let go? Why do we keep looking back? Why do we insist on continuing to drag the past along with us into the future that's supposed to be brand new and radically different?

Do we not see that as long as we look behind us and keep track of the past, that it’s not gone. We keep bringing it back up. We’re the ones who keep feeling guilty. What can we do about it now? If we can’t change it, and we can’t earn His salvation any other way, I guess we’re left with a simple choice between accepting His gift or remaining stuck in this middle ground of nothingness.

Friends, Lot's wife wasn't the only one who became a pillar of salt. We've done it too. We've allowed ourselves to get stuck looking behind us at all the destruction we caused. We've become caught somewhere in the middle of who we've been and who God says we can be going forward. We're stuck. We want to move on and leave the past behind, yet we can't seem to move on and leave the past behind.

There comes a time when we do have to choose. Do we continue looking behind us at the mess we've made or do we move on and leave the past behind along with all our shame for having screwed it up so badly? What we have to understand is that it literally makes no sense to keep hoping for a forgiveness we've already been given. He has answered our prayer. He has helped us start over. He was wiped out the mess we've made of our old lives and began leading us into something new, something better.

We have to do the rest. The giver of a gift chooses to give it, but the recipient has to be the one who humbly accepts it. He offers us salvation, but we have to accept it. He is willing to forgive our sins, but we have to let them go. He died to bring us into a new life, but we have to step out of the old into that new. This nonsense about choosing to stay in the middle because we know we don't deserve anything better than the nightmare we've created is a foolishness of our own unique design. We just have a way of making everything confusing!

Friends, it just doesn't have to be hard. As we've been discussing, it clearly doesn't matter that we feel unworthy because Christ did what He did anyway. Us feeling unworthy is our choice. It's something we keep bringing on ourselves. It's our doubt, or shame, or regret, or sorrow, or fear, or whatever other selfish and simply stupid reason we may come up with. If we choose to stay in this middle ground between who we've been and who Christ died to give us the chance to be, that's 110% on us.

He died so that we could leave our pasts buried. He cleared our slate, forgave our sins, and offers to lead us to a better life and save us from the annihilation we rightfully deserve. Clearly this isn't a story built on what we deserve. It's a story built on a love that doesn't stop at what we deserve. It's the story built on a love that blows past what we think we've earned and gives us something that we simply shouldn't have.

The amazing thing about God's love is that it's not given to only those who deserve it. His love, mercy, hope, salvation, grace, it's all given to those who don't deserve it. And we need to understand that. Our pasts will always be the dumpster fire they are. But we don't have to keep looking back to see just how badly we messed everything up. He has given us the chance to move and leave it behind. But we have to be the ones to make that choice and simply move on.

Remember Lot's wife my friends. Because if we're not careful, we too will become pillars of salt caught between our well-earned destruction and the beautiful love that came to graciously and mercifully save us from it.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold