After letting this sit and stew for a couple of weeks, I think I'm ready to tackle and share what God's been showing me about sin and how we get to respond to sin within a mindset of grace.

Jeremiah 2:13 says "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."

This verse is talking about when we leave God, when we ignore God, when we push God away in order to accomplish something on our own. And God calls this sin! This totally convicts me, I try so hard to be independent sometimes, even to the point of pushing God out of the picture. I work too hard to get something done that wasn't really meant to be done by me. God loves to step into our situations and our lives so that he can help us reach our goals. When we work on our own it's like building broken cisterns.














Dictionary.com describes a cistern as "a reservoir, tank, or container for storing or holding water or other liquid." In the bible days people would build cisterns to collect rain water to save in case of a drought or an event like that. But since the cistern is only holding the water, over time it would get stale and wouldn't taste all that great. 

When we "build our broken cisterns" we may accomplish our goal but in the process we break ourselves. We wear ourselves thin, and when we finally go to put our reward, the fruits of our labor into our cisterns, it runs out because we're broken. And in doing this we sin.

Sin is sometimes described using the Greek term of missing the mark (don't ask me what it is in Greek, cuz I don't know), and I think that description works really well. In the context of this verse forsaking God is a sin because it misses the mark or the point of God asking us to stick with him. By sinning we miss the opportunity for God to fix us and use us! God doesn't want us to be broken cisterns, he wants us to be wells. Wells that have springs of water flowing beneath them so that the water is always fresh and clean and good. God wants to be that spring of living water that fills us and helps reach our goals.

When we sin it hurts us more than it hurts God I think. God gave us boundaries so that once we were right with him he could help us even more. When we choose to sin, by leaving him, by breaking his rules about how we treat others and ourselves, we damage ourselves. Working without rest is damaging to us because it wears us down and breaks us. Worshiping idols or loving something more than God places unrealistic expectations about what our idols can do for us, and how much they may love us in return. These things only leave us broken and hurting. 

But when we turn to God he works to reverse the damage that sin does to our hearts. When we give God our trust and our permission to change us, change our work, our situations, and our lives he can heal us form the sin that hurt us. God is so good at healing us and giving us what we need.

John 4:13-14 Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." 

Sin isn't the main focus here. It's the power that God's grace has in restoring us from the hurt that sin causes in our lives. God loves you more than you will ever know and it's his dream to lead you to the place where you can be whole in him. And not just whole as in not being broken or hurt anymore! God has plans to use you! Plans to use you to help shake and move the foundations of the world out of its broken, hurting state, and into the total freedom and love that God has for each and every one of us! God's grace will change your life and with it you will never be the same.

Forgiveness

I'm not as mad as I once was.

Today I'm actually feeling the forgiveness that I've been choosing to give everyday for quite a while now. Mom has this spiel about how forgiveness is a choice that we make to make us okay and that the person who hurt us isn't really the important person in this exchange. We forgive so that our relationship with God can be open and so that we don't have this festering bitterness that separates us from God. We choose to forgive daily, despite our anger, our hurt, and our blatant hate for whats been done to us. And when we continuously choose to forgive God takes the junk in our hearts and he makes it so that eventually we can say..

I believe that justice has been served. That I can still place my trust in humanity. That it is not and never was my responsibility to prescribe justice, but that it has been done. I believe that God's going to soak this person's heart in grace and that God will teach him forgiveness. I believe that God will free him from his past. I believe that God is healing my family, growing us, and knitting us closer together. I am not tied to my stories, I am tied to God's goodness, and mercy, and love that is wholly expressed through the story of Jesus and God's grace.

I get to be defined by God's love and that's freeing.

Psalm 84
Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.
As they pass through the Valley of Baca (meaning weeping),
they make it a place of springs;
the autumn rains cover it with pools.
They go from strength to strength,
till each appears before God in Zion.

Hear my prayer, O LORD God Almighty;
listen to me, O God of Jacob.
Look upon our shield, O God;
look with favour on your annointed one.

Better is one day in your courts, than a thousand elsewhere.

I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked.
For the LORD God is a sun and a sheild;
the LORD bestows favour and honour;
no good thing does he withhold
from those whose walk is blameless.

O LORD Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in you.

Value

My worth, my value and who I am is found in Jesus. It is not found in what I do right, or what I am doing that feels like a complete train wreck. It isn't found in the number of things that I am juggling or in my responses to life's situations.

The most important thing that makes me, me, is who I belong to. I get to be a daughter of the most high God! I get to have inside jokes with Jesus, and I get to dance my heart out for him whenever I want. Often I try to measure my worth y measuring my ability to make things flow seamlessly. I try to make everything work out so perfectly that it isn't a possible thing to achieve. Not only does this leave me feeling like a loser, but it misses the point! If I am a child of God, it is not through works that I am saved. God loves me,  he sent Jesus to rescue me and that is what saves me. If I make a few mistakes along the way that doesn't change God's love for me. Life isn't about doing stuff for God and  getting it all right. It's about loving God and other so much that your works flow out of those relationships.

The act doesn't matter.

The relationship does.