Good Friday's Cross

Recently, I was excited to attend an event where one of my favorite authors would be speaking. One of my best girlfriends and I grabbed a nice dinner beforehand and we made our way to the venue. Before we found our seats, we saw and connected with ladies from all over town and various phases of our lives.

The worship was on point.

The Holy Spirit moved.

It was definitely where I was supposed to be that night.... but....

I couldn't put my finger on it. My girlfriend and I spoke about it some as we left that night. My sister-in-law also chatted with me about it the next day. Another friend who attended shared with me in the hall at church a couple of days later. - We were all glad we were there. We all felt the Spirit move - yet we all felt something was lacking....


This morning, in my devotional time, on Good Friday - it clicked . . . .

The text that night was Romans 8:1. The title of the tour was "The Freedom Project" and the passage was perfect. The author/speaker effectively and eloquently, transparently and profoundly led the women in attendance to lay down the sins of our past and challenged us to faithfully live out the truth of the verse -

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Romans 8:1

By God's grace, He allowed us to feel the pain of exposing our sins . By His grace, we found accountability in confessing them aloud. By grace, we saw our sins for what they are, we felt real regret for their presence and prevalence in our lives, and we were able to feel forgiveness for what had been exposed. 

As one lady yelled from the back of the room, "There is NO CONDEMNATION!" and we all clapped and we all cheered.

So what was the hang up? Why couldn't I just chalk it up to a great night and move on? 

This morning, I read a devotional though by John Piper and he used the word "condemnation" and it all came into a clear focus. He wrote, "The death of Christ secures our freedom from condemnation (Romans 8:1). It is as sure that we cannot be condemned as it is sure that Christ died.... Condemnation is gone not because there isn't any, but because it has already happened..."

There is no condemnation for my sin BECAUSE Jesus took it for me. His death on the cross was the condemnation that my sin deservedly required. Good Friday is "good" because the price for my freedom from condemnation has been paid in full. Good Friday is ALL about condemnation. 

I was thankful for the "late" date of Easter this year. I thought it would give me more time to prepare my heart and the hearts of my daughters. But everything I tried so far this year was feeling coerced and contrived. Nothing was feeling authentic, but more like I was just going through the motions. 

It came to a head at dinner last night as Wally and I tried to talk to the girls about the significance and gravity of the night before Good Friday. Maybe it was Satan's distractions or our lack of prayer, maybe it was our approach or their own internal battle with their unrepentant hearts - but it just wasn't happening. (Honestly, it was most likely a combination of all of those things.)

Disappointment would be a good way to describe my mood as I prayed before bed last night. It had been an overall really good day with lots to be thankful for, but this was not spiritually how I wanted to spend this holy weekend ending in Easter. I asked for His intervention and He definitely delivered this morning. 

As I read my devotionals and felt the ending of the message started by that speaker dawn on my heart, the weight of the glory of Good Friday became real. 

Bible scholars call it "substitutionary atonement." Christ took my place, my punishment, my condemnation, that I may know His freedom, live my created purpose and pursue a relationship with God. 

"It is good to look back and celebrate the rescue of grace. . . . Grace lives a the intersection between clarity of sight and hope for the future." These were a few of the words of Paul David Tripp's in his devotional for today in his book "New Morning Mercies." 

"Intersection" - a crossroads, where two ideas converge . . . My mind went to the vertical and horizontal beams of Good Friday's cross . . . 

At the cross, grace allows me to look back and look within and leave my sins. Grace also enables me to look ahead at my present circumstances and future destinations with hopeful resolve. Vertically, my relationship with God is restored and my future is secured. Horizontally, I can see God restoring and redeeming my past, my relationships and my everything for His purposes. 

This morning, the "therefore" and the "in Christ Jesus" of Romans 8:1 is my mediation and my worship's focus. He heard my prayer last night. He wrapped up the spiritual longing I had been feeling. He began to truly prepare my heart to celebrate why I have no condemnation in Christ Jesus this Easter season. 

Now that He has placed my heart in the right position, I pray that He will use me to influence the other four hearts that call this house home too.... 

(By the way, I hope this author comes back to Clarksville, or Nashville or somewhere close soon . . . I will definitely be buying tickets!)

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Better-Than-Disney Ending

If you're a fan of animation, particularly of the Disney genre, you will know my approximate age when I tell you that I remember going to see the Disney Renaissance movies in theaters for their original releases. After a couple of decades of poorly reviewed films, the animation department released hit after hit: The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Aladdin.

I loved the adventure described in each plot, but it was the romance that kept me coming back for more and made me a fan for life. Still loving these movies, you can find me curled up on the couch with or without my daughters, munching on popcorn and engrossed in these films I have seen dozens of times. I can literally recite many of them, line-by-line from memory.

My favorite fiction books, sitcoms, dramas, movies - whatever mode of being told a story - all have one great thing in common. They all end the way that they are supposed to end. Yes, many if not most of the time the endings are incredibly predictable. The iconic phrase "Happily Ever After" may even scroll across the screen or be typed at end of the final page.

This idea of how things are supposed to be, the ending we all long for is actually a grace given to us by our Creator. We are supposed to look around at our world, at our lives and come to the same conclusion - things are NOT the way that they should be. This longing for justice and happy endings and everything to be neatly tied with a bow, is an internal compulsion that forces us to seek answers and to work to make things better.

It is in this seeking for answers and working for better that I have found purpose and meaning to my life and to all the crazy that is within it. As I walk with Jesus and grow in my relationship with Him, through His Word and prayer and His work inside of me, I have found the answers I need and the source of all that is good.

Don't get me wrong - my life is not easy, but it is easier than some, and often there are more why's in my prayers than thank you's, but I trust the One with the answers. The more I learn and know of Him, the more faith I have in His power and His ability to redeem the failures in my life and make sense of the chaos around me.

There are relationships in my life that are not what I would want them to be. Parenting is hard and I know from years of student ministry that there are no guarantees or warrantees on particular methods. I am often failing and my fears of not being up to the task at work, at home, and/or at church keep me longing for the day when my strivings shall cease and I will no longer be forced to face life in this fallen place.

Honestly, this morning after trying to parent two in our church pew for disobedience during the church service and feeling completely unsuccessful in my attempt to worship, I had to leave the service to check my makeup. As the deacon prayed the offertory prayer, I slipped out of my seat to find I didn't look like the total mess and fraud I felt like.

Call it spiritual warfare or my own lack of faith or some kind of combination of both, but when I left the service this morning I felt defeated.

I want the ending now. I know it is coming, the day when Christ returns or calls me home, when everything is set right and good triumphs over evil and all is truly well with my soul - however it is God that chooses to bring this present age to its conclusion.

In the meantime, I am struggling with my perspective on it all.

Somedays I feel entitled to certain endings to specific "storylines" in my life. Somedays I just want to wash my hands of the job, the ministry responsibility and the relationship. Somedays I just want to escape into a Disney movie with a box of Sour Patch Kids AND a Milky Way Midnight, pretending like this isn't my reality at all.

Yet, I know that God is at work. He isn't wasting my time or His as I wait for the conclusions of it all. He has an intentional plan as He is actively working in all these "plot lines" of my life and those of all of us who are called according to His purposes. He is in the seemingly insignificant details and in the major twists too - both of individuals and of nations.

It is all bigger than me. Yes, it is war - there are forces unseen locked in battle all around. But it is His grace that is evident in it all.

It is grace that things are not right and good and easy in life SO I will seek Him, acknowledging my need for Him and my dependance on Him.

It is grace that He uses these same circumstances to make me more like Him, cultivating His fruit within me and somehow using me for His desired and determined outcome.

It is grace that He is leading me to accept, yes at times with heartache, that things are not as they should be.

It is grace that will eventually let me see ALL His promises fulfilled and experience the most epic of "Happily Ever Afters" that there will ever be.

In the meantime, at this point in the story - I seek Him, trusting Him by attempting to loosely embrace the brokenness around me. I pray that then He can bring even more beauty from these acknowledged ashes, and that He will use my awareness of the effects of sin in my life in ways that I cannot begin to fathom so that He will receive all the recognition - because, simply put, this is NOT the way that I would do things.

It is all from and for and to and through Him. This is my better-than-Disney ending.