Are You Ready to Go?

Sin has an insidious way of destroying your life. Cliche, no? It is amazing, though, how you can know something in your head, but until you feel it in your heart, until you experience the pain of failure and the misery of betraying your closest friend, you never truly understand sin. Sin betrays you. It uses you, chews your character up, rips into your soul, and leaves you a black, tangled up mess. And it can all start so innocuously.

"...Because you are special. You are a beautiful young women who has captivated me with your actions and words. God has given you a passion and a purity that has just intrigued me. With all my heart I am grateful for God having put you in my life. You are amazing. And I just cannot believe that you would like a poor little guy like me.

I started this email just to mail you my business cards, and to tell you that I hope your having a good day. I still hope your having a good day...and I hope I've made it a little better. Stay strong in the Lord. Keep on the right path. I'm not perfect, and neither are you. But through God's strength, we can make it through."

I emailed this to a girl at the start of a relationship a long, long time ago. I just found it today. I ended the email with a bible verse, and it was all nice and holy, and the scary thing is, I know that I meant it. How can you start a relationship with such convictions, and have it end the way it did?

It has now been three and a half years since I wrote that email. That relationship is long over, yet it has had a long lasting impact on my life. From that auspicious, holy beginning, our relationship devolved into a sinful, selfish mess, in which I seriously began to lose my identity in Christ. Why? I slowly faded into a sinful morass that I never properly combated from the start.

In the end, I lost it all.

Respect.
Honor.
Dignity.
Friendship.
Purity.
Love.


Gone. All of it, vanished in the air like a wisp of smoke.


Gone.


But, not quite. While I sat there on my pile of sinful manure, I realized that I was not alone...that there was someone crying over the stench of my sins.

All along, Jesus had been hanging out with me.

Honestly, I try to block out those years of my life. When I remember the hypocrisy, the lies, the lust, the failure...I never want to remember it.

But now, when I take an honest look back, I realize something that pains me more than anything else.

What was it like for God? To watch his adopted son roll around in the mud? How would the father have felt if he could have watched his son eat the food of the pigs?

Oh, the pain and sorrow He must have felt! How was that, to watch me foolishly choose my own prideful desires over the beautiful gifts he offered me? How a father must feel as he watches his son ruin his life, and know that he cannot step in to help until the son realizes his desperate state!

I was not alone. Not everything was gone.

No matter who left me in that time, no matter who I pushed away with my sinful actions, I have a God who sat with me on a rank pile of sinful crap, and took my hand, and said the most beautiful words I have ever heard in my life...

"Bradley...Are you ready to go now?"

  

 "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."