Skip to main content

 


Dear Ones,
As we approach the ending of this year's season of Lent look toward the approach Holy Week, here’s a thought for you.
Lepers may live in the same colony, but they share no vibrant community. Shame is that deep stain that comes with our brokenness. It whispers that we are contaminated and that we should avoid getting too close to others lest they discover how broken brokenness really is.
Shame seeks to isolate us, to cause us to wear masks, become self-protective and to feel as if we live life as perpetual hypocrites. Shame hates the light and in the shadows whispers that we will never change, encouraging despair.
But we have a greater truth; greater than the truth that we are broken; greater than the sum-total of all the iniquity of our sin…the sinfulness of our sin.
Jesus Christ has, by His own power and action in human history, delivered us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into His own Kingdom as sons and daughters, not strangers, aliens or groveling bastard-children. He has given us new hearts and a new spirit, a new, unending life; a life that can never be taken from us and one which does not grow narrower, but wider and more fulfilling.
The voice of shame has to be silenced. We need to call it the liar it is and rely on what God has already done for us. Jesus has seen our shame and dealt with it head-on on the cross. He has embraced all of our shame, all of our wretchedness first-hand. He died as us, not just for us. There is nothing hidden from His gaze. He has seen it and has taken it all into Himself in His crucifixion to break its power to smear our lives, to stain them any longer. He has removed the tell-tale stench of what we fear the most and has washed us utterly clean. THAT is the truth. That is why the Holy Spirit works to continually renew our minds to see as God sees; to think as God thinks; to believe what God knows to be true: we have been given a new heart, a new spirit, a new spiritual DNA. That is why the Holy Spirit can dwell IN US now.
We are a family who understand that we need a Savior, will always need a Savior and that we HAVE a Savior who has chosen to come and to actually live His life within us.
When you hear that familiar rasping whisper of shame trying to reassert itself in how you view your own heart, mind, life, family, circumstances or whatever, don’t listen to it passively, speak the truth to the liar and remind your own soul what God has done, what He has made of you and what He is continuing to make of you…you, new creation, you!
We are a community who can share vibrant fellowship because we know each other in need and in grace. Pray for one another as all are battling to silence the liar that shame is.
Loving you all,
Mark+

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WHAT DO YOU BLESS? It would be an act of utter folly and disaster were I to choose to "bless" what God will not bless. God's wrath is set against anything and anyone that would try and hinder you becoming all He created you to be and to grow in by being united to Him through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is nothing arbitrary about the Word of God. He is very specific on what will make for life and what will not. Human life only becomes human life when the Holy Spirit becomes Life withing a believer. Being united to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the follower of Jesus becomes a new creation and begins to live Life as God intended. God begins the good work, and He is the One who will bring it to competition. Somethings will NEVER make for life. What God calls sin, missing the mark of what will make for life, is always sin regardless of what culture anywhere and anytime say to the contrary. Sin cannot save, heal, redeem, restore or remake...
Post a Comment
Read more
 HE IS RISEN! IT IS FINISHED! After the Israelites had passed through the Red Sea by God opening the way for them to be saved, the whole of Pharoah's army, his horsemen and chariots pursued God's people into the opened way. Once they were all in, the waters flowed back into their place with suddenness and fury. Not one of the enemies survived. All perished in those waters. When Jesus Christ hung on the cross, all that sin contained, the full measure of the rebellion of mankind for all time, all the wickedness that was ever in human hearts were absorbed into the Lamb of God as He died our death, received our just judgement from God for all time, taking all that sin and death contained. In Him, sin and death died once and for all. They were overwhelmed, covered and drowned in the sea of His precious blood, poured out for the sin of the whole world. Not one enemy remained alive, all were stripped of their power to hold us in slavery to sin any longer. All their weapons were confis...
Post a Comment
Read more
 CONVICTION When the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, He doesn't ask us to make it right. We can never add to what Jesus Christ has already done on the cross to deal with the totality of our sin. The Holy Spirit asks us to accept the truth, turn from sin and turn to the Lord. Then He will make it right. Remember Who our faith depends on from start to finish, that salvation is of the Lord alone. Laying aside every hindering weight and the sin that so easily trips us up (different for everyone), we are to run the race He has given us to run with perseverance, fixing our eyes on Jesus. He is the One upon Whom our faith depends on from start to finish. He will never run out of eyesight any more that a good shepherd would go ahead of the sheep he was leading where they couldn't see to follow. Hebrews 12:1-2 "Surrounded then as we are by a great cloud of witness to the life of faith, let us strip off everything that hinders us, as well as the sin which dogs our feet, and let us r...
Post a Comment
Read more