messy heart.

So i’ve been frustrated with myself lately, and i can only think of one good way to describe what’s been happening.

Two years ago, my dad had some skin cancer on his cheek and the doctors said, ‘ok well we can try a new ointment that would bring all the cancer to the surface and kill it… or we can just dig it out and keep digging until we don’t find anymore. The bad side of the first is that it will be pretty ugly. The bad side of the second is that we don’t know how much is down there, so you could be left with a huge hole in your face.’ As you can probably guess, my father chose the first method: A fairly experimental topical treatment that would bring whatever cancer was hiding just under his skin to the surface. 

Well, was he glad he chose the first solution. He had a gigantic, gross, crusty scab on his face for months as more and more cancer rose to the surface to be treated. Needless to say, his face would have looked completely torn up and scarred had he chosen to have the cancer dug out. 

How does this apply to me? Well… For a while now, God has been bringing my deep dark secret sins to the surface of my consciousness in order for me to face each one and come to the further realization that I am seriously and cosmically depraved and unable to produce goodness of any kind. This seems like a downer talk, which I mean… it’s never fun to go through this kind of therapy with God.. but there is actually freedom in it. But even more than that is the pressurized feeling that comes when Irealize that I need to change. I need to change now, and I need to change in huge ways. 

Something that I heard in a sermon a while back, (and will now have to paraphrase because I forget the actual sentence) is: When you become a Christian, you GIVE UP the right to be upset with things that happen to you. Because of the Cross and because of the great exchange that happened through it… I have absolutely NO right to get mad at people or circumstances. I have no right to think “they wronged me… I deserve better… don’t I ever get to have what that person has?…. If only I could make this person understand what it feels like to be on this end of the situation.”

I have forsaken that baggage and that “right” because I handed over all my crap to Jesus and said “I am Yours.” The hardest part of this for me is that God does not want us to be doormats. He wants us to be active and passionate lovers of every heart on this planet. When friends stress me out or when relationships make me feel inferior, it is SO easy to flip inward and focus on all of the needs of my heart and what I’m feeling and how I wanted the situation to go… but I think that’s the opposite of what Jesus was about. Yes, He did pray intimately to the Father about issues going on in His heart, but He poured Himself out every day for the wretched, needy, wounded, screwed up people who had wronged him with every action of their hearts since they were born. He had created them to understand how great His love was for them and they had constantly rejected it. But He never complained that His feelings were hurt or gave up on them. Peter, one of the disciples, claimed to love Jesus with all his heart and was one of the first to deny him publicly. But after Jesus’ death, when He resurrected and hung out on earth a little longer, He put Peter in charge of the first church. Jesus held no grudge. He didn’t say, “look Peter. I would give you responsibilities, but you’ve only shown me that you will fail. You’ve given me no reason to trust you again. I deserve better friends than you.” Heck no. Jesus told Peter to be bold and to take care of God’s people and to go save the world in the name of Christ.

One of the most beautiful and frustrating thing about Jesus is that… as He wrecks my sinful heart apart and shows me all the ways I’m not cool… He takes each of my sins, shows them to me… lets me swish them around in my mouth a little bit and see how bitter they each are… to the point where I’m overwhelmed with how far I’ve fallen. And that is when He looks at me and says “I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you.” Isaiah 44:22. He does not want our sin, though it is catastrophic, to be misunderstood as being larger than His grace. He knew how filthy I was when He introduced Himself to me, and no matter how scared or doubtful I might get sometimes… there is NOTHING I can do to make Him love me less.

So today, or the next time you’re frustrated… which will probably be in less than 10 minutes, because we’re Americans… think about how many times you’ve frustrated God and how much love He pours back and how He is provoked by your sin and not pushed away by it. (Credit to Dean Inserra for killer sermons on that topic.) And know that part of growing and being made new is God bringing up the old and letting you see it before He gets rid of it. Yeah, my dad would have preferred not to have been scabface for months of his adult life, but how much better is it to NOT have cancer in your face. Yeah? The same with our hearts. Another gross medical analogy is that healing scabs are itchy. But the itch lets you know that there is, in fact, healing taking place. A lot of times infections become dull and comfortable and doing something about them requires pain. But the hard work of healing is much greater than the apathy and comfort of infection. And spiritual infection is not an option for children of God. We have people who need to see our hearts healed by the blood of Jesus.