Restoration

This post has been churning in my mind for a while now. It is my attempt at an honest and sincere reflection of a personal journey to restoration. Ten months ago I made the decision to resign from the church where I was serving on staff. I stepped away from a church that I deeply loved and people that I deeply loved because I had slowly fallen into what can only be described as a spiritual desert. Through a series of poor choices I had gradually become what I once heard described by a well-known pastor: a full-time pastor and part-time follower of Christ. I am confident that God has given me gifts to preach, teach, and build relationships with people to point them to Christ. However, I began to use these gifts without the giver. I became almost completely reliant on my own abilities. I was foregoing seeking God's power and purpose, as well as focusing on character building. I lived in this false world for quite some time. I had become a professional at playing the role of a pastor: using the pastoral catch-phrases, performing on the stage, quoting the right speakers/authors, etc. The church was growing, things were happening, and the compliments were plentiful, all the while my little false life was slowly spinning out of control. Where was God? He was in his sovereign mercy sending me messages that fell on deaf ears. A good friend of mine who is a youth pastor lovingly confronted me. I ignored it. The people closest to me, my family, expressed concern over the direction I was headed. I rationalized. I thought I was talented enough to overcome it. How does this sort of thing happen? If we continually ignore the Holy Spirit, it will happen. It goes like this: 1. We have an impure thought 2. The Holy Spirit alerts us 3. We say “I can handle it” to the Holy Spirit. I repeatedly said “talk to the hand” to the Spirit over several years. Then God in his great love did for me what only He could do: He ripped open my sin. My life was at that point summed up by Psalm 32:

"When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat. Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt...and you forgave me! All my guilt is gone."

For the first time since I can remember I felt like I could be honest about who I was and about the struggles I had. I vividly remember sitting in the room with men who were crying with me as they prayed over me. It was a painful moment, but God broke me in the best sort of way. I never once viewed it as God's punishment, but rather His unfathomable mercy and love.

Through this experience of God's mercy, I learned several critical lessons:

1. We should love to be confronted. If people who sincerely love God and love us come to us and present a problem they see, we should love them more for doing so. I'm not talking about people who come to us only pointing out the things we shouldn't do. I'm talking about friends who have the courage to lovingly point out things in our life that are competing for our affections. These friends are worth more than you can imagine.

2. We have to constantly be aware of, war against, and confess our sin.

"For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God." Romans 8:13-14

I've been plowing through a little known book for about a year called The Mortification of Sin by a 17th century Puritan, John Owen. It's been a tremendous help to understand the issue of personal sin. Owen points out that we make several mistakes in dealing with sin: 1. Not killing the roots. If we don't strike sin at the core, it will continue to reappear. 2. Replacing the killing of sin with other activities. Basically, we convince ourselves that increasing godly activities will cure us of our sin problem when it only strengthens it. 3. Realizing that the killing of sin is the work of the Spirit. It is only through Christ's work on the cross that sin's power over us is defeated. It is not defeated by a worship service, book, podcast, or small group. These are means to an end, not ends in themselves. That end is God himself and glorying in His salvation for us.

In the next post, I will talk about how pastors deal with sin in their own life. If you think your pastor does not deal with any sin, this post is for you:)