My friend writes to me – “I really like what this guy says about sin. See what you think.” She sent this:
"What it is that sin does to the sinner, not simply from the perspective of punishment, but how sin itself operates – to dull the perceptions of its effect on the sinner. It is this deafening, blinding, dulling of the spiritual ears, eyes and the mind’s receptivity that is so deadly.
We’re talking cause and consequence. We’re talking about stepping off places like Glacier Point and expecting to float on gossamer wings across the valley floor, and it simply doesn’t happen that way. One falls the 2,000 feet with smashing consequences. One does not break the law of gravity; one proves its validity. One does not break God’s laws; one only proves their validity, their truthfulness, in the consequences one must then experience – disunity, disaster, decay, disease, and eternal death." (Sorry, don't know original source.)
And I write back – Oh my yes! I think I am living proof of that, and I am so grateful that God just didn’t let me go, and kept dragging me towards him, inch by inch with claw marks all of the way down the hallway, but still, He pulled me out - out of the pit, out of the pain.
The country singer John Anderson sings a song that goes “If I’m ever going to save you, let go of the stone.” I could not let go. I thought I did many times, and sometimes I wanted to so badly it was all I could think about. But then, there was so much of the time that I absolutely refused to let go, to look at another way, to give up what I thought I wanted. I heard someone say once – Why is it that we fight God so hard for what we do not even really want?”
The only thing I can think of that happened was that God just kept chipping away at the stone long enough to allow it to slip out of my hands. I rose to the top of the dark waters. I got the first real breath of air in my life, and I just kept gulping it in.
God pursued me and loved me so deeply that He refused to let me go. Even though I abused myself and my relationships, hated Him and denied Him, and cursed His beautiful name. I took every talent and blessing He had given to me and threw it in the trash. Even so, “The Lord is long suffering toward us . . . not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9
No matter what I did, He held onto me with love and understanding. I didn’t have to be “good” for him to love me. I often liken it to the time in the Bible when the angels came to Sodom and got Lot, took him by the hand, and led him out of the city – because He could not let go. (Read Genesis 19, particularly verse 16.)
I was out in the mess of sin so long that I couldn’t even see what it looked like. The darkness is pervasive, subtle, and and at first charming – until you are in so deep you can’t breathe. Then the cage door slams shut on you. When I let go and started breathing, the things I was interested in and spent my time on, the terrible deeds I had done were so shocking and painful to look at through my new eyes. It was not easy. No one could have told me these truths (although some tried) until God made me ready to hear them. You cannot breathe until you let God control your breaths!
Surrender is a very precious word to me. It sounds so beautiful, so tender, so fulfilling. Now I know that is what it takes for me each day, to surrender my rights to myself into God’s hands. It is a conscious choice I must make hundreds of times a day. I can’t wait until the day when Jesus comes and I am completely healed, and that surrender is as natural as breathing!
This is my conversion experience. I can’t really say exactly when or how it happened. What moment was it that my heart opened? Jesus lovingly spoke to Nicodemus one dark night about what it means. John 3:8 “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
The wind comes down from the mountain, blowing in from a place you cannot determine, and blowing out to a place you do not know. But you can feel the wind, you can see and understand the results of it. The Holy Spirit is a warm, renewing, healing wind that brings deep, life-giving breath. It took nearly thirty years in a life full of sin and loneliness, hitting the “rock bottom” as you have heard of, for me to finally accept that wind.
Everyone’s conversion experience is different, but each experience is a treasure to the one who feels that wind on their face. God gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit - John 14:16-17 “Then I will ask My Father and He will give you another Helper. He will be with you forever. He is the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot receive Him. It does not see Him or know Him. You know Him because He lives with you and will be in you.”
The Holy Spirit is the way to lead us back to sanity. If you do not look away, you will feel the wind, warm and comforting on your face.
This is a powerful text to study deep and breathe in.
“He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:13-14 NKJV
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