Day 3050 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 1:16 NIV

To be ashamed of the gift which absolves our shame is the kind of nonsensical contradiction that only a broken mind can conceive.

Yet each time that we agree to cower in fear because of our awareness of how our limitations have brought about our immense guilt, we avoid the very One who came to tell us that we've not the power to write this story. And if we haven't the power to write this story, then our mistakes also lack that authority, which is a truth that's being radically forgotten amongst us today.

Because so often we give our mistakes the authority to keep us living apart from the healing we need because our pride is embarrassed to admit that we need His help.

That's one of the words used to describe shame. It's an embarrassment. It's a kind of humiliation that seeks to go so far as to instill doubt in anything other than what the guilty know they deserve. Shame tells us that we're so far gone from where we should have stayed that there's no way the One we left behind would possibly welcome back us after all we've done trying to prove ourselves able to take His place in our lives.

But there's another definition of shame. A darker, more dangerous descriptor that digs far deeper than mere regret or distress. And that is that shame is enough to instill hesitation, to bring about aversion, to convince us that we mustn't even try to consider being forgiven right up to the point where we become entirely unwilling to seek God out of a shame so deep that it's altered our entire outlook.

And I fear that our loathing of the limits we've tried so hard for so long to pretend we don't have has left us teetering on the very brink of loathing the life-altering opportunity we've been given to put our faith in He who has no limits, a fact even death must now admit.

That's the great casualty in this war raging within us all between pride and humility. Pride tells us everything we want to hear that convinces us that we're all that we want to be. It promises that we can feel free to lean upon our own power, and that we’ll never get lost or fall short in doing so. Pride offers us this endless stream of lies that flow into us with increasing tenacity seeking to drown away the truth we know remains a constant responsibility.

But having forgone the responsibility to live by truth for so long, our tattered hearts and shattered understandings eventually reach this point where we become afraid to learn.

And to choose that path where we can avoid the pains of having to humbly learn to live a new way of life all because of our inability to address or accept our inabilities sets us on a course to never come close to the gift of change we know deep down we need to make.

They say that history repeats itself, and so to not learn from it is to welcome its return. I'm personally at the point where I can say with full honesty that I do not want my past repeating itself. There have been mistakes I've made that I pray nobody else opens the door to themselves. There are memories that I pray fade away but never really seem to do so. There are scars that haven't healed, maybe never will. My deepest personal hope is that I'm entirely unrecognizable to who I once was.

And though it takes an endless wrestling with shame, it's only in that grappling that we find the courage He placed inside to keep fighting.

But unfortunately, this gift we've been given in the death of another is of such immense meaning that our pride knows it can't survive our acceptance of it. Should we embrace the gift of the cross and fall to our knees before the Christ and offer Him what's left of the little of the little that we've not lost or broken or given away or tarnished beyond recognition, our ego knows we'll not be able to run anymore.

Salvation hamstrings our wild streak, and as our chosen way of living our lives has clearly bought into this hollow version of freedom that only includes doing everything we want, it's just all but impossible for us to consider giving that up. And we will look to every excuse we can invent to make it seem unnecessary to do so.

Even to the point of agreeing to live a shameful life all so that we don't have to be ashamed.

But that's the contradiction that will ultimately prove as feeble and foolish as it sounds. We all know the monumental weight of guilt. We know how miserable the sting of regret. We know what it's like to mess up, make a mistake and get things wrong. And we hate it because it makes us look like the fools we are. But guilt doesn't diminish simply because we do a new thing we've not yet learned to feel guilty about doing.

No, regret doesn't go away simply because we drown it out with the sound of a louder and more raucous party. Fear is not absolved by pretending we're not afraid of the darkness we've been living in. And our souls are not saved simply because we buy every lie that tells us they needn't be. No, we know the truth remains no matter how much hogwash we throw on top of it.

Sadly, we think we have the power to determine things for ourselves so that our guilt can be remedied. If we can write a new version of reality where everything we want to do is perfectly acceptable to be done, then we'll have never done anything wrong. If we can alter the truth just enough to encompass our lazy inability to embrace self-control, then we'll have nothing of which to ask forgiveness as we've not gone against anything.

If we can turn down God's voice just enough that the lies aren't worried about His presence, then we'll never again feel ashamed for ignoring the only reason any of us are here in the first place.

I'm telling you, we do some really scary things trying to outrun what we know we're not fast enough to elude.

And there it is again. We're not fast enough to evade God. We're not big enough to argue with Him. We've not the authority to alter His truth. And we have not the power to convince Him to adopt our preferences so we don't feel bad about not being able to see past them. And anytime our power proves unable, shame is an almost immediate reaction. Because when we're used to assuming we're bigger and better than we are, being embarrassed is all we can be when so clearly proven wrong.

But it doesn't have to be that way. The only reason it is that way is because we insist on continuing to do this our way. And though many may not yet be able to admit it, one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess and every heart will finally see that our way sucks as it carries with it a kind of selfish stupidity that actually thinks that the best way to avoid shame is to deny the One who offers to take it away.

You see, we could look to the cross and see a reminder of all we've done to cost Christ the pain and anguish of having to hang there. We could read through the Bible and weep over every verse that speaks to our many sins. We can go to church and hope the preacher doesn't preach one of those sermons that makes us feel like every eye is looking right at us.

We can go the other route just as easily. We can look to the cross and think it but a religious image worshipped only by the weak and weird. We can never open a Bible as we equate it to the many fairy tales we stopped believing by age seven. We can refuse to waste an hour of our lives listening to some guilt trip we think only there to keep people feeling broken.

Or maybe we could just let go of all our preconceived notions and stop letting our shame keep us ashamed. So many are only hesitant to trust Christ because their pride still runs their lives. Many are only able to refuse the clear freedom found in His mercy as they think their freedom still of more value. Many will go on denying the help they need simply because they just can't admit they need it, no matter how much life sucks stuck in that pretense.

Many will reject the possibility of God's power simply because it would instantly prove them all but powerless.

But God's power isn't there only to decimate and destroy. He's not a God of only revenge and vengeance. He is also a God of mercy, kindness, healing, understanding and a kind of love we can never fully understand. This place keeps trying to focus on one side, but He must be both as both are needed. He wounds, but healing follows. He rebukes, but only to lead a better direction. He kills so that life can be found through the leaving behind of all that was never life anyway.

We don't need to be ashamed of the fact that we need help as we've become so lost following our own path that we don't even know what home is. We don't need to be worried that He will reject us like we've so often done Him. We needn't avoid that which we know we need, because if He didn't want us to have it, Christ wouldn't have died to give it.

The ultimate sticking point in salvation is that we must admit that we can't effect it ourselves. We can't make it happen, can't make it possible. We cannot absolve ourselves of the things we know we've chosen to do. We made our beds, but instead of having to lie in them, we have a Savior who doesn't mind flipping things upside down. We just need to accept the fact that we've lived wrong side out and need Him to turn us around.

It's true that we've taken these temples that He's created us and turned them into dens of thieves and scoundrels and scumbags and scallywags. We've sold our souls seeking to satiate the selfishness inside. We've made a complete mockery of all He made us to be. And yes, we should be ashamed, but of ourselves, not the One who came to save us from ourselves.

And that's the difference between life and death.

Please don't choose death just because you know you deserve it. We all do. But God's love is of greater power than our ability to make a mess of everything we touch and try. Let Him be the bigger man. Let Him be the hero you know you need. We may all want to be the ones who save the day, but friends, it's better to admit that we can't than to pretend we can only to inevitably be wrong.

We might be entirely powerless, guilt-ridden, shame-laden and far too at home in the darkness of depravity. And the Gospel may point all of that out as it calls out all the mistakes we know we've made and yet have tried to pretend aren't there. But while the Gospel points out our flaws, our scars, our lack of power over the death we've lived, it also points to the One who is strong enough, wise enough, big enough to be better than we've ever been.

While we might be afraid to admit we're not as powerful as we've long led on, the only power that matters in the scope of eternity is the power of God to bring us back from where we should have never gone. Yes, we might have to admit the shame found in all our selfish mistakes. But doing that allows that shame to be wiped away and replaced with a grace that gives us something to celebrate.

And no, we may not be able to celebrate ourselves anymore, but there's really nothing to be gained by doing so anyway. But to celebrate Christ and His ability to overcome all we've never been, well that's something worth facing whatever it takes to find. Because just beyond the shame of admitting we need help is found the help we need. Let Him bring the help you need.

Many a criminal has managed to break out of jail throughout history. But unfortunately, nobody has ever managed to break free from the prisons we’ve built inside, because it’s not within our power to do so. No, to loose these chains we ourselves have forged, we need help. To break out of these prisons of selfish pride, we need a map we’ve not drawn under the assumption that we had the authority to determine what freedom means.

No, we need someone who is both willing enough and strong enough to break through all our nonsense and help us see with eyes not clouded by shame, sadness, sorrow or stupidity.

And in case you need a bit more reason to do what you know you can’t do without, know that you'll not be the only one who benefits from your courage to be weak. In exchange for that humility you'll find a testimony that just might help someone else find freedom from the chains they're trying to pretend aren't there.

That's what the Gospel does, because only Christ has that power. And it's a power we should never be ashamed to admit we need. Because in the end, He didn’t just do it for us. He did it because it shows who He is to all who are willing to believe in something, to believe in someone bigger and better than themselves.

And He is very much all the above.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold