The Freedom of Obedience

I have recently had two very significant experiences with sin in my life. This is significant for someone who has often wondered what sin looks like and how to recognize it. I don’t mean that I’m perfect. I mean that I really wasn’t exactly sure what sin looked like in my life. I had asked God to show me but maybe I wasn’t ready to see it. Maybe I was blinded with pride. (This is another blog for another day!) Anyway, God has been merciful enough to show me at this point and it has been a much less frightening experience than I thought it would be. I guess I always thought that having sin exposed in my life would be horrendously painful. That I would be so moved to repentance and remorse that I would tear out my hair, starve myself for days and shred my clothes. Honestly, not something I was too interested in experiencing. But when I learned for real the loving character of my God and how it would be inconsistent with his character to bull whip me, I found that when I responded to revelation of sin in my life with real repentance, it actually led to this amazing freedom that Jesus talks about (John 8:31)!

My first revealed sin was when a friend asked me for help in a family emergency. I offered the needed help and promptly turned to another, mutual friend to ask for prayer for this first friend. When I realized (not until the next day….I’m a slow learner) that I had broken the first friend’s trust, I called her immediately and offered a confession and called the second friend immediately to request that the information not be shared any further. Luckily, the second friend was very trustworthy and assured that everything would be fine. Whether the first friend forgave or not wasn’t really the point. I had humbled myself before my God, confessed my sin, LEARNED SOMETHING, and did what He asked me to do. This obedience was incredibly freeing. Imagine never having a friend mad at you again because you couldn’t be trusted with confidential information! Imagine the non-existent wounds that would no longer need bound by me learning how it breaks my God’s heart when I sin in this way. Imagine the feeling of having everything right with my God, my maker, my redeemer!

My second revelation was concerning something similar. God shared Matthew 18:15 with me so that I would know that it was sinful to share how someone had hurt me before going to that person with the hurt first. I guess I’ve never been good at recognizing sin in anyone’s life. I always thought that if I got hurt by someone else that it was because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time or that I was somehow at fault. Other people don’t sin against me! What would make me so special that someone would or could sin against me? No, I was just being overly sensitive! But then I would find another friend and share with him or her exactly how so and so had hurt me. They would offer sympathy, I would feel better but a splinter had been buried deep into the original relationship. The wound would fester until the relationship was permanently damaged and neither of us would have any idea what happened. God does not want our relationships to be injured in this way. He commands us in Matthew 18:15 to go to the offending party, present the fault to him or her alone (so that it is JUST BETWEEN THE TWO OF YOU) and attempt to solve it in this way. Well, when I confessed this behavior to my very best friend in the whole world, he was hurt, yes, but he was touched (I believe) by my confession and he forgave me. It will take years and years to clean all the wounds. But imagine the freedom I have experienced knowing that I’m not going to create any more splinters to fester. That if I do, I can quickly confess and remove it before it becomes infected.

God is really merciful. He knew I’d mess up in these ways and he knew how to prevent it, he knew how to fix it and he provided a way. These two steps of obedience were like a baby’s first steps for me. They were difficult…the whole confession part. But they have been exciting! And although I am disappointed in my sinfulness, I don’t really feel that tearing my hair out is the answer. Confession and repentance are much easier and much less injuring! They are actually very freeing and I praise God that He provided a way like this!