Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


10.22.2007  

I Know You Know

"What failure leaves us with is love. What you're left with if you're a Christian after you've failed is love. When we fall, our self-righteousness is shot a deadly blow, right? We love to stroke our own godliness and to notice it, and to stroke our own egos, but when you've fallen in front of everybody your life ends up like a dirty diaper in the middle of the living room floor. You hardly want to pick it up and say, 'This mess is my devotion to Jesus.' Nobody brags about that, right? Nobody goes around talking about their pure motives when they've just been exposed for having the spirituality of an open diaper. We are laid bare. But for a believer, this is a beautiful thing, because when a believer gets re-exposed as a hollow sinner in need of a Savior, he's back to being himself! There you are with a dirty diaper of an open life, and all of a sudden, love begins to bloom there. 'Cause what are you left being? Just what you always were: a sinner, saved by a Savior; a failure who's found a Champion; someone who has no hope who's found Someone who has hope, and isn't it amazing that Peter, so boastful, so full of self-confidence, is willing to say to the Lord God Almighty, who sees everything, 'You know I love you!' And he's willing to say it three times! 'If there's one thing I'm sure of, I know You know I love you!' How can he be so confident? Because when you've failed and Jesus keeps coming back for you...when you've failed and fallen, and you've fallen flat on your face, and Jesus goes and dies for you, when right there, He goes and dies for you, and then He comes to bring you breakfast! You don't have anything left of yourself! You're done! But you love Him...you love Him. How could you not love Him? You know, it's a good thing to get rid of the pride and the self-reliance and the self-desire, it's a good thing to be done with me. If your failure has taught you that Jesus won't work with you, you have not failed enough! Because your failure is not meant to teach you that Jesus can't do much with you, it's meant to teach you that you can't do anything with you! Your failure isn't meant to lower the bar of your expectations for your Christian discipleship, it's meant to destroy them apart from the power of Jesus Christ. It's a beautiful thing to be brought to nothing, because then you're at a place when you really say, 'Apart from You I can do nothing.'"

-Ryan Fullerton, from a sermon a little over a year ago

The other week, when I was talking to Shuey, I told him that I have a strange relationship with humility. I love the idea of humility, the notion of being humble, the reputation of being humble. But, in all reality, I really don't like being humbled. It's almost as though I go throughout my day asking the LORD how much humility is enough humility. Can you relate to this? It's a question that comes from the same heart that asks, "How much sin can I get away with and still be ok?" The problem with that heart is that it isn't a heart that understands the love of Christ because it doesn't see the way that Christ will purge out any false notions of self-righteousness. Why? Because the love of God is so perfect, so all-encompassing, that He will not allow us to be satisfied by anything less than that which satisfies Him: His Son. And how does He do this? By humbling us, bringing us to a point where we know we have nothing but love for Him. And how do we know this? Not because of what we do for Him, but because He loves us even and especially when we fail, and, as Ryan so beautifully states, because He brings us breakfast.

posted by Bolo | 11:57 AM
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