GettingUpFromACrash
6-21/22-08
Getting Up From a Crash
Lewis Smedes, in his book “Shame and Grace,” talks about one of the most embarrassing moments of his life; one with which I can identify.
He wrote, “A few years ago, my wife Doris and I went to a theater called the Mark Taper Forum at the Music Center in Los Angeles to see a performance of Shakespeare's ‘Julius Caesar.’ It was a matinee performance starting precisely at 2:30 in the afternoon. It so happened at 2:30 on that afternoon there were exactly two minutes left to play in the deciding game of the semi-finals of the NBA championship featuring the Portland Trail Blazers and (his favorite team) the Los Angeles Lakers. And the score was tied with two minutes to go when the curtain went up. Looking ahead to this possibility, I succumbed to the temptation and smuggled a radio into the theater, put on the earphones and listened to the play-by-play of Chick Hearns, the Lakers' broadcaster, while I watched the first scene of “Julius Caesar” unfold. My wife glanced at me..." (Has anyone guessed where this one's going?) I thought she was asking me to tell her the score of the basketball game. I intended to whisper it for only her ears to hear, but the crowd at the game was yelling and screaming in my earphones, and I had to make myself heard above the racket, which I did. I yelled. ‘18 SECONDS TO GO. LAKERS DOWN BY A POINT!’” Fifteen rows ahead of me startled patrons turned around, shocked. On stage, Mark Anthony missed a cue. At intermission I needed to find a bathroom. I decided to make my move through the lobby, and a woman half my size and more than twice my age was waiting for me. She blocked my path and hissed that I ought to be ashamed of myself. I said I was sorry, that it was an accident. ‘No excuse,’ she said. She'd just hoped to God that my behavior was a momentary lapse and not a way of life, and I ought to be ashamed and stand up and apologize to the cast.”
I can identify with doing something that stupid. The problem with temptation is that it usually doesn’t have just to do with stupid, it has to do with something much more destructive than that. It usually has to do with sin. What do we do when we’re ashamed of ourselves and should be?
A couple of weeks ago I expressed that we can overcome temptation because we have had too much learning and too much love to be dragged down by temptation. We’ve learned that each moment of temptation has more at stake than the moment. Our future, our family, and our faith are at stake in each moment of temptation. And God has done too much in our lives for us to let temptation destroy the work He has done. We have learned that there is a way of escape in every temptation we face, because God provides a way out. But what if this information has been too late for you? What if you are here thinking, “Wow. I wish I had heard this months ago? Or years ago?” What are you supposed to do when you’ve already messed up? How do you recover from a moral and spiritual crash? The Apostle Paul had the same question.
“‘I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?’ Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary. But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?" [Romans 7:14-24, The Message]
We all could have written this. We’re all equally wretched.
Author John Ortberg gave a compellingly honest assessment of his disappointment in himself in words with which I can identify. He wrote,
“I am disappointed with myself. I am disappointed not so much with particular things I have done as with aspects of who I have become. I have a nagging sense that all is not as it should be. Some of this disappointment is trivial. I wouldn't have minded getting a more muscular physique. I can't do basic home repairs. So far I haven't shown much financial wizardry. Some of this disappointment is neurotic. Sometimes I am too concerned about what others think of me, even people I don't know. Some of this disappointment, I know, is worse than trivial; it is simply the sour fruit of self-absorption. I attend a high school reunion and can't choke back the desire to stand out by looking more attractive or having achieved more impressive accomplishments than my classmates. I speak to someone with whom I want to be charming, and my words come out awkward and pedestrian. I am disappointed in my ordinariness. I want to be, in the words of Garrison Keillor, named Sun-God, King of America, Idol of Millions, Bringer of Fire, The Great Haji, Thun-Dar the Boy Giant. But some of this disappointment in myself runs deeper. When I look in on my children as they sleep at night, I think of the kind of father I want to be. I want to create moments of magic, I want them to remember laughing until the tears flow, I want to read to them and make the books come alive so they love to read. I want to have slow sweet talks with them as they're getting ready to close their eyes, I want to sing them awake in the morning. I want to chase fireflies with them, teach them to play tennis, have food fights, and hold them and pray for them in a way that makes them feel cherished. I look in on them as they sleep at night, and I remember how the day really went: I remember how they were trapped in a fight over checkers and I walked out of the room because I didn't want to spend the energy needed to teach them how to resolve conflict. I remember how my daughter spilled cherry punch at dinner and I yelled at her about being careful as if she'd revealed some deep character flaw; I yelled at her even though I spill things all the time and no one yells at me; I yelled at her- to tell the truth- simply because I'm big and she's little and I can get away with it. And then I saw that look of hurt and confusion in her eyes, and I knew there was a tiny wound on her heart that I had put there, and I wished I could have taken those sixty seconds back. I remember how at night I didn't have slow, sweet talks, but merely rushed the children to bed so I could have more time to myself. I’m disappointed. And it’s not just my life as a father. I am disappointed also for my life as a husband, friend, neighbor and human being in general. I think of the day I was born, when I carried the gift of promise, the gift given to all babies. I think of that little baby and what might have been; the ways I might have developed mind and body and spirit, the thoughts I might have had, the joy I might have created. I am disappointed that I still love God so little and sin so much. I always had the idea as a child that adults were pretty much the people they wanted to be. Yet the truth is, I am embarrassingly sinful. I am capable of dismaying amounts of jealousy if someone succeeds more visibly than I do. I am disappointed at my capacity to be small and petty. I cannot pray for very long without my mind drifting into a fantasy of anger; revenge over some past slight I thought I had long since forgiven, or some grandiose fantasy of achievement. I can convince people I'm busy and productive and yet waste large amounts of time watching television. These are just some of the disappointments. I have other ones, darker ones that I'm not ready to commit to paper. The truth is, even to write these words is a little misleading, because it makes me sound more sensitive to my fallen-ness than I really am. Sometimes, although I am aware of how far I fall short, it doesn't even bother me very much. And I am disappointed in my lack of disappointment.”
Can you identify with those words? When we crash and have moments when we’re so disappointed in ourselves, we wonder how disappointed in me a holy perfect God must be. There some things we’d better know. There is nothing more important than an obedient relationship with God. When we crash there’s nothing more critical than us coming back to God…but that’s where the problem lies. You got into this because you didn’t trust God. Temptation is not an issue just about self-control. With every temptation the issue is whether or not to trust God. Is God trustworthy? Will God come through for you? Or do I meet the legitimate need in my life in an illegitimate, ungodly way, because I can’t trust God to come through to meet my need and take care of me? At stake in every temptation is this question: Can God be trusted? Can God be trusted so that I can do this deal without bending the rules and giving full disclosure on this deal? Can God be trusted in this relationship if I do the right thing? Can God be trusted even though I’m so lonely? Can God be trusted even though I need a friend? Can God be trusted even though I’m getting older and I want to be married and this guy may be the last train out? Can God be trusted in the realities of life or is He just “Big God” only interested in dealing with “Big God Stuff” and not really involved in or concerned with my everyday life? Do you often think that if you don’t make your life happen – however you have to – it won’t happen.
Do you think if you don’t, it won’t? If you have fallen to temptation, do you understand that you’re where you are because you went ahead and did the deal or made the call or stayed too late and, at the end of the day, all you have is more doubt, more hurt, more regret and now here’s the dilemma. You didn’t trust God when you had the chance and now you’re facing the same situation and the same temptations again. And, since you didn’t trust Him the first time, He might punish you by not coming through for you this time, so you might as well do it your way again. You can spend years spinning in this death loop, never seeing God work in your life and it only gets worse.
Because when you don’t trust Him, you don’t obey Him, and when you don’t obey Him, eventually you quit believing in Him. Every time you give in to temptation and say no to God you chip away at your relationship with Him. Every time you give in to temptation or sin you’re saying, “No, God. You’re not trustworthy. You won’t give me what I need. No, God.”
This is why if you grew up in church and you found or find yourself far from God, you might throw out some theological, philosophical reasons for the state of your relationship with God. But if you were honest, it didn’t start there. You didn’t think and theologize your way out of a relationship with God. You behaved your way out of a relationship with God. You fell to a temptation and you felt guilty and asked God to forgive you. Then you fell to a temptation and felt guilty and asked God to forgive you and on an on and eventually you thought does this even matter?
Then you fell to it again and you didn’t even feel a temptation. In fact, you didn’t really think it was wrong any more. The temptation became a lifestyle. You behaved your way out of a relationship with God and, as a result, you destroyed your confidence in God. Your great philosophical reasons didn’t take you out of a relationship with God. Along the way you looked for philosophies that supported your behavior and your lifestyle. If you were honest, there were temptations that dragged you away from your relationship with your Heavenly Father. When you sin God doesn’t change, but you do. Your faith, your confidence in my God is at stake. When you stop trusting you stop obeying and before long you stop believing.
What must you do when you’ve crashed? The death loop started with a lack of trust. It must be intercepted with a step of trust toward God. Go back to God.
"Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." [Romans 7:25, TNIV]
If you are truly motivated to recover from a crash, here’s possibly the most important verse of Scripture you’ll ever hear.
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus," [Romans 8:1, TNIV]
"because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful humanity to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in human flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit." [Romans 8:2-4, TNIV]
The power sin has is condemnation. You know the script. “You’re terrible. You should be so disappointed in yourself. You think God loves you? You had better avoid God because He could never love someone like you.” Jesus took that away. He took all of that away. And now we’re not living to see how good we can be and impress God. We live trusting what the Spirit of Christ is doing in us. The solution is trusting that Christ has done and is doing his work in us through His Spirit. The Spirit says, “Don’t panic. Don’t push away God. God loves you. Trust Him now.” The death loop started with a lack of trust. It must be intercepted with a step of trust toward God. If you believe Paul’s words – “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” – there’s no reason to keep your distance from God.
Hit the pause button for a moment. There’s a danger with this truth and it’s more common in people who’ve been churched a long time: to presume on God’s grace. I sin. God forgives. I like this arrangement. One comedian said, “When I was a kid, I used to pray every night for a bicycle. Then when I realized that the Lord, in His wisdom, didn’t work that way, I just stole one and asked him to forgive me.”
There’s a line in “Amazing Grace” that says, “’Tis grace that taught my heart to fear.” When you understand the enormity of God’s love, a love so immense that he sent His Son to absorb your sin, it will change your heart. You won’t want to presume grace. Grace will change you. It will humble you. You will begin to trust God.
The movie ‘The Mission’ with Robert de Niro and Jeremy Irons is based on events that took place in the 1750s. Jeremy Irons plays the part of Gabriel a catholic priest who started a mission among natives in South America. Robert de Niro plays Mendoza a mercenary slave trader who has captured some of the natives from the community that the priest has been building and as a way of producing income for himself, he sold those natives to a slave trader. Mendoza even killed his own brother in anger at him in jealousy over a woman. He became a self-condemned man. Interestingly, Gabriel the priest seeks to help Medoza out of his self-condemning pity and crushing sense of guilt. And he says, “Are you worthy to take the risk of penance?” Mendoza says, “I’m not sure you would want me to do that.” But he takes the risk and together they take a journey in which the priest loads the guilty man down with a pack of weights that he must carry as a symbol of his guilt and they climb a treacherous trail up a mountain to the community of natives where Gabriel has been building a church and Mendoza has captured slaves.
"What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" [Romans 8:31-32, TNIV]
"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." [Romans 8:37-39, TNIV]