Tuesday-Sunday, I go to our church building with the Yoo's and Jinwon. Most weeks are similar. We have morning meetings discussing the different tasks we need to accomplish each day. We all teach Bible classes during the week. I lead a small group on Wednesday's, travel to Gumi three hours away from Seoul to teach every Thursday, and prepare for and help lead Sunday worship on the weekend. Routine can be a great blessing, providing a necessary rhythm and flow to life; yet, it can also present a danger: a failure to see "under the surface of life", ourselves, and others around us. Sure, I still will engage in external ministry through teaching my bible classes, leading my small group, and having conversations with people; yet, lost in them is a deeper core of reality in the hidden realms of my own and others' hearts: unspoken struggles, unfulfilled expectations, unsatisfied desires, brokenness, and sin. We all have a keen sense of this reality in and around us; but somehow, even and especially in the church, we often carry around our burdens alone within us, hoping that we can hide in our performance, work, and maybe even mysteriously have all the brokenness evaporate. Maybe if I just ignore the deeper longings and struggles, do my job well, maintain good relationships, everything will get better and one day be far more fulfilling. The solution: ignore the interior layers of life, focusing on the exterior, and the heart will naturally come. I would never say or agree with those words, as they are obviously Pharisaical, but my actions proclaim that I do.
A couple weeks ago, I was unable to ignore my brokenness and weakness. I had kept on seeking to serve in ministry, preparing for my sermon that I preached a week and a half ago, teaching, and helping others in my own strength. There was no true inner reliance on the grace of God, no openness before God and others of my own need to repent and believe the gospel, no perspective outside of myself to God and others. Once I began to pray honestly before God, my sin and brokenness was exposed. I couldn't hide from it, as much as I wanted to. My own words I was preparing in my sermon on the church in community wouldn't let me: Christians can never live as self-made, self-sufficient, self-sustaining islands. We were made to live through Christ and community in lives of repentance and faith: brokenness. Christians aren't strong, righteous, or good in themselves. Separate from Christ and community, we are only desperately weak, wholly unrighteous sinners. I knew this. I constantly talked about this in classes, public prayer, and conversations. Yet somehow, when it came to experiencing and practicing the lifestyle of the gospel, I wanted to be above it. As a result, I had cut myself off from experiencing the only source of life, joy, peace in Christ and community.Finally, thankfully God would not let me continue striving.
The next day Jae, Hannah, and Jinwon were sharing in our morning devotional together about Paul's struggles in ministry where he was abandoned and deeply discouraged (God's providence, anyone?!). It was the perfect passage to delve into my own struggles and brokenness, admitting my hypocrisy and my subsequent desire to escape. The amazing thing is that in sharing and facing my brokenness with my brothers and sister, talking and praying together, we all opened our hearts about our own struggles and sin and were led to rediscover how real, deep, and great God's grace is for broken sinners. Through sharing and prayer, I could literally taste God's grace. Yes, my sin was great--far greater and deeper than I could dare imagine; yet, God's grace was infinitely greater and deeper than I could ever believe! You see, facing brokenness and sin does not alienate or destroy us, as I often think it will. Instead, it actually frees us to know and experience the grace and love of God!
Later that night my Bible reading was Psalm 32. David's words were the perfect description of the reality of true freedom through brokenness:
"Blessed [happy!] is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed [happy!] is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledge my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord," and you forgave the iniquity of my sin" (v. 1- 5).
David first recounts how the one who knows and has God's forgiveness is truly happy! Yet, in his experience, he was wasting away. Why? Because he was silent. He was not living through the grace of God as a sinner. This silence isolates David, leading his life to be nothing but weariness and groaning. But when David faced his brokenness and sin, then he rediscovers the reality of God's forgiveness. Later, look at how David comes to see God after facing his brokenness: "You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance" (7). This turns my idea of exposure upside down. I think exposure will isolate, shame, and destroy fellowship with God and others. David shows in this psalm that it brings the opposite: community, freedom, and joy in God! It enables us to stop hiding in ourselves with only our weakness and sin, and to discover God as our Hiding Place who holds our lives in His Sovereign, gracious hands. It enables us to stop striving in our own strength and rest in the provision and power of our God who is mighty to save. It enables us to stop foolishly trying to be our own saviors and to depend solely on the One true Savior, Jesus Christ. Facing my own brokenness and sin enables me to not simply say that God is good in the gospel; it actually leads me to taste God's goodness in Christ with His people.
When we are broken before God and with His people, it also brings true fellowship and community. The next Sunday after sharing my brokenness to many people who make up Covenant church, God brought person after person to share their brokenness and to taste again together of God's grace in the gospel. The isolation I feared in exposure actually brought community! I could now be ministered to and minister to others! The grace of God wasn't just words but reality itself--the very air you and I breathe as Christians. Without it, I will suffocate, not simply in salvation but in year by year, month by month, week by week, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second living. The gospel of grace for sinners is the sole source of our existence as Christians. When we live in it as a community in reading God's word, praying, playing, eating, drinking, working, ministering, giving, and receiving there is a freedom, joy, peace, and depth in the midst of brokenness, sin, and suffering that no person outside of it has ever tasted. The gospel reaches to infinity and beyond. Its length, height, width, and depth is immeasurable. It cannot be tamed, controlled, or mastered, nor was it ever meant to be. God revealed His glory in the gospel, so that we could spend our entire existence and all eternity exploring, savoring, relishing, worshiping, delighting, growing, and adoring the light of the gospel in the face and person of Jesus Christ. Lets keep going deeper and deeper and deeper together through Christ in lives of repentance and faith until we behold that glory in Jesus ourselves without any hindrances, scales, or veil and shall, through beholding Jesus, be like Him.
No comments:
Post a Comment