Who Does God Say I Am?

At some point in the Christian walk, you will encounter what I like to call the "Now what" dilemma. Everyone (every believer, that is) knows this. It is the internal battle that is sparked by committing a sin. The guilt and shame of this sin can be paralyzing.  

One of my personal heroes, John Ortberg writes, "Sometimes we don't have much of a sense of God's presence in our lives, but there's no mystery to it at all. The truth is that our desire for God can be pretty selective. Sometimes we don't want God to be around.

Dallas Willard write about a two-and-a-half-year-old girl in the backyard who one day discovered the secret to making mud (which she called 'warm chocolate'). Her grandmother had been reading and was facing away from the action, but after cleaning up what was to her a mess, she told little Larissa not to make any more chocolate and turned her chair around so as to be facing her granddaughter.  

The little girl soon resumed her 'warm chocolate' routine, with one request posed as sweetly as a two-and-a-half-year-old can make it:

'Don't look at me Nana. Okay?'

Nana (being a little codependent) of course agreed.

Larissa continued to manufacture warm chocolate. Three times she said, as she continued her work, 'Don't look at me Nana. Okay?'

Then Willard writes, 'Thus the tender soul of a little child shows us how necessary it is to us that we be unobserved in our wrong.'

Any time we choose to do wrong or to withhold doing right, we choose hiddenness as well. It may be that out of all the prayers that are ever spoken, the most common one--the quietest one, the one that we least acknowledge making--is simply this: Don't look at me, God.

It was the very first prayer spoken after the Fall. God came to walk in the garden, to be with the man and the woman, and called, 'Where are you?'

'I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid,...so I hid.'

Don't look at me, God.

[...] We don't say it out loud of course. We probably don't admit it even to ourselves. But it's the choice our heart makes:

Don't look at me, God."

The apostle Paul said it this way, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me." (Romans 7:15- 17)

That means Paul was not a sinner. And if you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, then neither are YOU. That is, if the Bible is true. "It is no longer I who do it..." We simply aren't sinners. Earlier in Romans Paul says that we have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.  

Doesn't it make sense that Satan would want a statement like, "I'm not a sinner" to come off as heresy? If he can keep the Christian trampled to the floor with guilt and shame, then he wins. But those who are in Christ are new creations. The old has gone (slaves to sin), the new has come (slaves to righteousness). After all, isn't that why Jesus came? Belief in Jesus Christ equals freedom from sin.

I think walking around with the mindset of who we are in God's eyes would greatly influence our behavior. Personally, I live with an intense awareness that I am a sinner. I bounce around from sin to sin, almost expecting it. In weaker moments, I really do tell God not to look at me. I forget who I am. I still walk around thinking I am just another sinner. "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love." That's me (in my eyes). In God's eyes I am white as snow.

A.W. Tozer is becoming one of the most important people in my life. Here are his words from The Pursuit of God, ch.3 Removing the Veil, "The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and God is in us. This would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be enlarged. This would burn away the impurities from our lives as the bugs and fungi were burned away by the fire that dwelt in the bush."

So regarding that "Now What" dilemma, where I feel like God has left me to my own devices, I will consider who I am. Who I really am. Next time I sin (which is inevitable), I need to confess it right away. Confession of guilt is still necessary and God uses our heavy, hurting hearts to bring true repentance. But a persistent, nagging guilt and attacks of, "You're worthless. You suck. You will never be able to stop doing that. God's done with you, etc." are never from our loving Father. They are from Satan. It is wise to realize that right now. As Bill Hybels says, "God doesn't want you to sit in some penalty box for an indeterminate amount of time."

I'll end my first blog with encouraging words from Jesus in Matthew 18: 22. Peter comes up to him and asks, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"

Jesus replies, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." Not specifically 77 times, but an infinite amount. It is good to remember who Jesus is when you come to this passage. Jesus is God. He thinks like God. This is God's attitude towards us. He will never NOT forgive us. Never.