Dear Friend,
I just wanted to write to give you my testimony of a work that God has done in my heart, a work that I thought would never happen. I think you and I may have some similarities and wanted to encourage you as a brother.
I moved into a Christian boarding house in 1987. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the four temperaments but it was pretty big back in the day and served to describe each of our personalities. The one no one wanted to be was a melancholic because it was so looked down upon by the community in which I lived. There was only one self-described melancholic in the house and she was teased because of it.
My wife swore that she would never marry a melancholic and she was really surprised when I came out of the”melancholic closet.” I think she was more than a little disappointed when she found out that she was married to someone who could get down when things didn’t go his way or when things got difficult.
My depression manifested itself in a number of ways, but the two things that depressed me the most were my job and my walk with Christ. I hated my job. I always thought I would be independently wealthy by the time I was 30 and certainly never thought I would have to work retail for the rest of my life. I am a creative person who would have loved nothing better than making a living writing and taking pictures. I ended up working retail for 22 years. God blessed me in so many ways through this but most of the time I was too depressed about it to see it. I can go more into this at some point if you’re interested, but I told my wife countless times that I was just going to quit and that I couldn’t do this anymore.
The second place where it affected me was with my walk with Christ. The two were intricately intertwined, but I didn’t realize that at the time either.
I was a terrible Christian, but I looked pretty good on the outside. I had a perfect wife, obedient kids, and a cool house, but inside I was miserable. I used to think that all it would take was time for me to be a better Christian, because all the older men that I knew were pillars of the community and had it all together. They were movers and shakers, but I could barely pray, and reading my bible was sporadic at best. It seemed to me that the older I got the worse I got. I used to recite the fruits of the spirit in my mind to see which ones I was actually exhibiting at the time. If I had a few I felt pretty good. More often than not I didn’t think I had any and certainly never joy.
So what was my answer? Try harder. Use will power to stop sinning or being depressed. My pastor said that Christians had to be joyful so I would try hard to be joyful (that always works doesn’t it?). I found that I could fake it for a while, but not for very long. More often than not I just got less joyful and more depressed about being such a stinky warrior (that’s a Nacho Libre quote btw). I would confess my sin only to commit the same sin again the next day. I would have to work up “godly” sorrow so that God would accept my apology, but then I’d screw up again the next day and at that point I knew that God could not forgive me. It was a terrible cycle that went on for years. There were times that I would re-confess my sin because I didn’t think my first confession was sincere enough. Do you know how depressing it is to know in your mind that God can’t forgive you?
In this community weakness is looked down upon as sin and any disobedience will extract swift retribution from God. Men are men and melancholy is weakness. I was fed a steady stream of do more and try harder. I was told that a real man would buck up and that obeying God was a matter of will power. Well, I had no will power and the person telling me to try harder to obey had never had a day of melancholy in his life and knew nothing of what I was going through. This type of Christianity works well when you think you have merit or grew up in a military family, but it did nothing for me.
It got so bad that the perpetual vision I had was of Jesus holding God back and telling me to run so I could escape from what God really wanted to do to me. I thought Christ had died so that I could get to heaven, but holiness here was unattainable. Christ hadn’t defeated sin, he just made it so that God couldn’t get at me. Can you believe I was so confused?
I desired to do what was good and right and wanted to have a deep, personal relationship with God, but I was a dry desert with no oasis in sight.
Rewind to 10 years ago. A friend of mine tried to convince me that grace was real, that God was pleased with me, and because of Christ he was no longer counting my sins. He told me that my relationship with God had nothing to do with MY actions and everything to do with what Christ had done. I thought he was insane. Truly I did. I thought he had surely gone off the deep end and fallen into heresy. It was plainly evident that God gets mad at us when we sin and that he requires us to be good. I even went to so far as to find a list of all the imperatives in the New Testament (I think there are over 1000) and send them to him to show him that we had a lot of work to do as Christians. I never actually DID any of the imperatives, but I knew they were there and were required.
We actually argued over this for close to five miserable years. I’m a slow learner and it took me that long. The week before my life changed I remember sitting in my office and saying out loud “wouldn’t it be great if you were a God who didn’t count my sins? But I know you’re not that kind of God.” It was almost too much to hope for.
A week later I was reading 1John 3:6 “Everyone who resides in him does not sin; everyone who sins has neither seen him nor known him.” This freaked me out. I sin. Everyone I knew sinned. If that’s the case then no one sees or knows him. Then I read the first part of the verse with new eyes. This is not a statement of what you will LOOK like (what your actions will be) if you reside in him. This is a statement of fact. God is saying “Everyone who resides in him DOES NOT SIN.” If you reside in God, you are not capable, in God’s sight, of sinning. It takes a minute to get this.
Then I read further 1John 3:9 “Everyone who has been fathered by God does not practice sin, because God’s seed resides in him, and thus he is not able to sin, because he has been fathered by God.” NOT ABLE TO SIN? In God’s sight I am not able to sin? This does not mean that I don’t sin. I do everyday, it’s just that God isn’t counting them. He doesn’t put them on the debt side of my ledger.
These passages were the beginning of my transformation. For me at least, this changed my life. It was like being born again again.
My problem was that I knew God loved me (I had been told that), but I never believed God liked me or found me pleasing. I have heard abused people say that they knew their fathers loved them even though their fathers beat or abused them. That’s kind of how I felt. I was actually told that God loved me, but that if I disobeyed him He would beat me with an axe handle. I was told that when I sinned God couldn’t stand to be around me (actual quotes). To know that your father likes you, is happy to be around you, and is pleased with you, in spite of who you are, is a game changer.
But how can God like me when I sin? Jesus! Romans 4 says God doesn’t count our sin. Romans 5 says that we have peace with God because of Christ and Romans 8 says there is no condemnation (ever) for those of us in Christ. Jesus talks about the father as one who runs to the prodigal son and kisses him or celebrates when he finds the lost coin. Jesus speaks of the father as one who lavishes his kindness on us, and who cares for, loves, and enjoys his children. We are adopted and loved and he finds great pleasure in us because of our belief in his son. When he looks at us he sees Jesus, and thus we are perfect in his sight.
So, now that you think I’m a complete heretic, let me tell you what this has done for me. I am reveling in my weakness. God can’t work in my strength, but his power is made perfect when I am weak. I thank God that he has forgiven every sin that I’ve ever committed or will commit. When I sin I thank God for that forgiveness. My heart is light. For the first time the burden of Christ seems very light (as he promised) because he is doing all the heavy lifting. I rest in the words “It is finished.” I no longer strive to be someone important, because I am someone important in Christ’s eyes.
My desire to sin has gone way down. My depression (when I keep my eyes on Christ, remember who I am in him, and remember what he’s done) is non existent. I no longer care about pleasing people because Christ is pleased with me. The funny thing is though, that now I do please people because of Christ. People who couldn’t stand to be around me now like hanging out with me. I love because he first loved me, and what he said about the prostitute is true of me: “the one who has been forgiven much, loves much.”
I can go on and on, but let me just say that God likes you my friend and is pleased with you because of Jesus. Read through Romans with that in mind. Read through it and ask as you go if God has truly made peace with you, even when you sin. If this is true what does it mean for you?
I like you,
John
Tie Flying 