Becoming Sin

I used to think the battle for our souls was waged the three days in the tomb. You've probably heard some creative orators imagine the battle that took place in time, space, and history during those three days Jesus lay buried in the tomb, postulating the possible stories of death's defeat and life's victory celebrated for all time and history in His resurrection.

But as I study the crucifixion of Christ this week before Easter Sunday, I feel my eyes have been opened, and I am astounded and humbled. 

Every step of Christ's ministry here on earth, He raged a war against the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh. The battle began as soon as His heart beat miraculously inside the womb of a virgin girl who thirty something years later would weep at the foot of her child's cross.

Jesus came to earth to do exactly what His people, the Jews, wanted Him to come and do--overthrow an evil, oppressive kingdom. It just wasn't Rome. It was bigger than Rome. So much bigger. No, He came to wage war and defeat the principalities, the powers, the rulers of darkness, and spiritual wickedness of this world. (Ephesians 6:12) He came to destroy everything and anything separating His people from eternity in His Father's presence.

So He became sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). In His human form, God the Son became the very disease that plagued His creation and slaughtered it once and for all--for all mankind, for all eternity.

What does it look like to become sin?

It looks like an innocent man who lived a life of peace and miraculous provision, freedom, and healing for all who encountered Him to be accused falsely. For this man to be treated to one of the most unjust trials in the history of trials only to be condemned by not just Jews who were suppose to know Him, who should have been studying for His arrival and known the signs of prophecy He fulfilled, but to also be condemned by the indifference and cruel apathy of the Gentiles under Pilate's cowardly sentence. Becoming sin looks like suffering injustice, indifference, apathy, having a blind eye turned, and cold hearts in charge.

How the Jews must have hated him! In their self-righteous hypocrisy, they schemed for the murder of an innocent man choosing to release a known criminal instead. To become sin, Jesus bore their hatred, vehemence, murderous hearts, their jealousy, ignorance, fear, and pride. His battle looked like bearing suffering with dignity and self-control. Always speaking truth. 

Even when they stripped His dignity. Skin ravaged, probably hanging in strips from His flogging, He endured the shameful mocking of bored Roman soldiers who treated Him like their afternoon entertainment. They did not know Him. They didn't care to. Their hearts were foreign to the words of God, unlike the Jews steeped in them. They fashioned a crown of thorns to shove on His head for fun. To make fun. The mocking robe of purple they threw across His beaten back must have felt like sand paper on His open wounds. Only for a rough piece of heavy lumber to be strapped to His back. Only for it all to be ripped off His body again. I'm sure some of the blood from His wounds at started clotting around the cloth pressed into His back only to be ripped off once again. Agony! Torture! To become sin, Jesus carried the weight of humiliation, cruelty, the depths of the depravity of a human mind and heart to the hill of Golgatha, the place of death.

Take note of every detail friends, we are watching the Creator of the Universe battle our greatest enemy for us, in front of us.

Naked. Completely exposed. Blood dripping over every sinew of His form. Nailed with scientific precision to be lifted up between two known criminals, yet Jesus takes center stage. There in utter torture He would suffocate in front of a watching world on a hill near the entrance of Jerusalem where all coming to celebrate Passover would be sure to see Him. King of the Jews. Innocent. Not giving up His Spirit one second before every prophecy was fulfilled concerning His death. Not one prophecy went unfulfilled. He didn't give up His Spirit until He had fully become sin, right there on the cross for all to see, for all history to re-read.

As sin, Jesus was mangled beyond recognition. Scripture says He was so disgusting in form, many could not even look at Him (Isaiah 53:3). As sin, the sky darkened over all the land as He drank the full cup of the Father's wrath and for the first time in all of time, the Son was physically, emotionally, spiritually severed from the Father's presence. Forsaken. If you read the details, every Gospel account together, and if you ask the Spirit to open your eyes and open your heart, you see Jesus become sin, what sin looks like, what sin smells like, what sin feels like, what consequences sin ravages on our souls. What we always complain is so hard to see and understand because it exists in a spiritual realm is right there in front of you, on display, for all the world to see on a perfect, innocent, spotless human. 

You want to know what sin looks like? What it does to the heart and soul of a man or woman? Look to the cross. Don't pretend it's not real. Don't turn away and believe the lie it's not that big of a deal. Don't be indifferent. Let your eyes gaze upon the picture of sin, the very real proof and evidence, the unseen we're always asking to see. Gaze upon Christ on the cross, and let the nausea, repulsion, and anger be turned back upon yourself because my sin put Him there.

My sin put Him there. My rebellion. My need for control. My selfishness and self-righteousness. My pride. My greed. My jealousy. All of them. All the sins. They are mine, and He took them and became the picture of them, so I would understand their cost. A cost I am incapable of paying despite all my good intentions and positive thoughts and right motivations. In the eyes of God, my life looks like the ravaged form of Christ hanging on the cross. That is what sin does. That is what sin looks like.

And until a perfect sacrifice was made we were condemned to that fate, that gruesome fate, eternally severed from connection with God. Living tortured, broken, scarred, shame-filled lives, marred inside if not also out.

But the more I study the crucifixion, the details, the intention of Christ, the more I believe we are watching the battle for eternity be fought in front of our very eyes. Satan threw his absolute worst at Jesus, tempting Him to give up His mission with every excruciating breath. Yet, we watch Jesus stay the course. Fulfilling every prophecy to the last detail. What the crucifixion of Christ shows is the innocent Son of God, human in every way we are human, yet also one with God the Father and God the Spirit--we watch Him become sin before our very eyes.

And in willingly and purposefully giving up His Spirit at the exact perfect time in history, we watch our innocent, perfect, omnipotent, obedient Lord defeat sin. He became sin and crucified it on the cross.

He became sin and crucified it on the cross.

No other human in history could have done this. Born of the seed of Adam, we are all born with sin (Romans 3:23). That ugliness already exists within us from our first heartbeat. It's in our DNA. Only God Himself in His perfection could have planned a way to save us. So now, once again, as in the Garden of Eden at the beginning of all mankind, we have a choice. Because there can be no true love without free will, so there must always be a choice.

At the fall of Adam and Eve, Satan thought he had stolen our choice, and for God to make a way for another one once again for all time, He had to provide a better choice, one we could better see and understand the consequences, counting the cost of our choice. The choice not to eat the fruit of a physical tree or not, but the choice to eat of the Body of Christ or not, to be one with Him in the Body of Christ by the body of Christ or to be separated from God belonging only to sin. There only ever has been and only ever will be two choices.

Christ willingly bathed Himself in the blood of our sins, so we could choose to be cleansed by that same blood, wrapping our sinful lives in the righteousness of Christ's sacrifice, the innocence of His sacrifice. We can now choose sin's guilty rags or Christ's innocent robes. We can choose to live in an eternity of filth or in an eternity of the cleansing, bathing Light of Christ. We can choose separation from God or unity with Him forever. We can choose death or life.

I cannot help but love my Jesus for the hurt and unimaginable pain He willing endured both emotionally, psychologically, and physically on my behalf, in my place, for my sin, choosing to do something I could not do even if I had wanted to. I LOVE Him for that choice He made. I am moved to a deep realization of gratefulness I too often forget. Satan, this world, this flesh, too often distracts me from the love, devotion, and gratefulness I have for my Jesus.

May we all take the time to truly appreciate the cost of having a choice, and the Love it takes to be able to willingly give that choice to children who despise their Father, their Creator, in their ignorance. Because sin breaks, bruises, mars, ravages, and fatally wounds every aspect of our senses, yet God loved us enough to send His only Son to not just die, but suffer, becoming sin, in our place, just so we could have the CHOICE to choose Him again.

Whatever you think you know of God, whatever false image of judgement, wrath, suffering, indifference, etc. that may be stamped on your heart or mind of who He is, I pray the scales of blindness and the walls of false, self-preservation will fall this Easter season in light of the reality of what God orchestrated just to give us the opportunity to choose Him again. Knowing too many still wouldn't choose Him, God the Father sacrificed His only Son to give us all the same chance anyway. The same choice. The same chance. Equal opportunity.

WHO DOES THAT?!?!? Who do you know who would willingly, intentionally do what Jesus did? Because whoever that person is, they deserve my whole heart for my whole life.

We're Moving--What It Looks Like to Follow

In December we got the phone call that made it official. Summer of 2021, our family would move back to Georgia.

We had known for over a year this was the direction we might be heading. We had talked about it in brief conversations, always putting it off for another day or month until we just couldn’t put it off any longer.

But that phone call made it very real and very permanent. This chapter is closing for our family and a new one is about to begin.

And before the well-meaning love and excitement of friends and family from the east coast begins to pour in, I need you all to know, I love you, but I don’t want to leave California.

A piece of my heart will always call Georgia home. It’s where the seeds of my faith, beliefs, and family values were planted, watered, and grown.  

But California is where my soul has sung a song I didn’t know I could sing. I have found an intimacy with my Jesus, my husband, my children, and my friendships I didn’t know was possible.

To leave the life we have built here is an act of pure, submitted obedience to how we feel the Lord is leading both Joey and I in our prayers and conversations with the Lord. We go where our God sends us, no questions asked, just trust.

It was the story of the sending of Abraham that moved us out here (Genesis 12), and it is the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac moving me back (Genesis 22).

Because I am not the same person returning as I was when I left. Seven years of my highest highs and lowest lows, of relying on my family of four, of learning to depend upon strangers who became family, of self-reflection and therapy and stretching myself—seven years of talking to God first and more because sometimes He was the only One around to listen. I am not who I was when I left, and my soul longs to stay. The calling of Abraham to sacrifice his promised heir and beloved son feels very relatable with this move. I feel I am being asked to sacrifice all the promises God fulfilled of my own dreams here in California, trusting He knows best and has better plans ahead.

I wanted California to be my Promised Land. I wanted to put down roots here and bask in the beauty of its coastlines, the wonder of the ocean, and majesty of the mountains for all my days. To live here is to have access to adventure and exploration every weekend for the rest of your life. On my down days, my low days, riding waves in the frigid ocean is refreshing, renewing, and rejuvenating. In the chill of the water, the weight of the world washes away, and I’m left like a child with the thrill of the moment right in front of me. I am fully present. Salt, wave, ocean, sunset, bonfire, my children playing, my framily laughing—fully present in the gifts of God in my life. Soaking them all into my being like the sunshine that is always present. Never wishing to be somewhere else.

I love my Peach State home, and in the fall, I will relish the crisp temperatures, the need for fuzzy sweaters, and the sound of leaves rustling. In the spring, I will smile at cherry blossoms and how the world comes alive with green. I will reconnect with family and find joy in the journey of high school for my children, but I’m not sure I will ever not wish to be somewhere else.

Part of me prays that’s not true, that the ache of leaving will fade, and part of me prays I can carry the weight of wanting because the people in California I will want to be with are that dear to me. For them to cease being a part of my life, feels like a death I cannot bear.

There is not a day that passes I don’t shed at least one small tear over saying goodbye, over last experiences here on the west coast, over a chapter in a book that is ending, and you just wish it weren’t. It was that good. It is that good. I’d reread it again and again.  

But there is a peace that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:6). A peace that only comes from my Jesus Who abides with me daily. We already have a home. The Lord quite literally handed us the perfect house on a silver platter in the middle of downtown Marietta paying below appraisal. If that’s not a modern-day parting of the Red Sea in today’s real estate climate, I don’t know what is. The Lord has given us a peace and a path for sending our kids to Marietta City Schools for education next year. This will be their first experience with public school, and I covet your prayers for them and for me. Again, another choice covered in supernatural peace, shrouded in its own layers of the unknown.

It’s difficult to describe the inner tug-of-war inside my mind, but my soul is at peace. I rest assured God will not lead me anywhere He has not already been Himself, nor somewhere He will not go with me.

We are not told much about Abraham’s emotions, thoughts, or reactions as he made that trek to Mount Moriah with Isaac. Was he angry at God? Did he curse and mumble under his breath as he cut the wood for the sacrifice of his son? Did tears of great grief and fear fall from his eyes as his aged hands shakily packed the knife that would take his son? Did he set his course with eyes fixed full of hope knowing His God was true, no matter the cost? We don’t know.

And I think we don’t know because it doesn’t matter. Abraham’s emotions, reasons and thoughts were all secondary to his obedience. In the end, how he got to the point of obedience was not as important as the actual act of walking by faith and loving nothing on this earth more than he loved God.

I want that kind of faith and trust in Jesus as my legacy. I have screamed and wept and hoped also on this journey to leave California, but in the end, what will matter, what does matter, is our family will obey and follow in faith where the Lord leads, no matter the cost. I have no reason to believe my Jesus will not provide every step of the journey, one moment at a time. He has already gone before us. He has already made smooth so many rocky paths. He has remained true and so must I.

Like so many stories in the Bible, Abraham’s is not just a story, it’s an example to follow. It’s the instructions to life we so desperately seek, crave, and beg God to give. He already has. He’s given us all we need for life and godliness in the scriptures and the Holy Spirit, all made possible by the death and resurrection of his only begotten, beloved Son (2 Peter 1:3, 2 Timothy 3:16). Maybe one of the things I love most about my Jesus is He never asks me to walk the path of an experience He does not already know intimately Himself (Hebrews 4:15). The details may look different, but the emotions of the heart are the same. He knows what it takes to do what He asks from first-hand experience.

Why would I not follow? How could I ever think I have a better plan or better way? Where He goes, I go. His people will be my people, and His land my land (Ruth 1:16). ‘Til death we unite. To live is Christ and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21). The older I get, the longer I follow, the more that phrase makes sense.

What do you choose to follow so passionately you willingly sacrifice all that is most dear to you? Is it worth it? My Jesus is always worth it.

Surrendering to Stillness

God is moving in my life deeply in a way that is hard to wrap words around.

He's literally called me to a place in time where I am to BE STILL...and breathe. Really breathe. Breathe deep His presence.  Breathe deep His glory and majesty in His creation. Breathe in the blessing of my family.  My family.  Just the four of us. Breathe in a Genesis 1:2 moment in time--the stillness of beginnings.

I've continued in BSF again this year, and God is already beginning to plough the fields of my life with the study of Moses.  Moses who spent the first 40 years of his life thinking he was somebody, only to spend the next 40 years of his life as a nobody, so that God could use the last 40 years of his life showing the world what God can do with a nobody by turning him into a somebody for His glory.

I want to see God's glory.  I've asked to see it, and God has answered, "Here you are.  Here am I. Trust Me with the three remaining most precious things I have not removed from you.  Trust Me fully and be still and watch Me work...in you."

And so I am learning to see space for God's opportunity in the white space of availability on my calendar instead of believing the lies that I do not matter, that I am forgotten, that I am useless.

I am learning to relish hours of long quiet moments in time when I can actually sit and take in and breathe deep the beauty of this land where I live.  Not just stare at the bird feeder in passing, hoping one day I will have a moment to go refill it, but actually taking time, not hurried, to fill the feeder and sit and just watch birds.  Just watch birds.  Practicing being still.  It's the practice of filling a day with rest and meditation and prayer, instead of a long list of things to do, and believe it or not, this is so counter cultural and opposite to my own personality that I find this to be harder work than the list of things I love to accomplish!

Because believe it or not, I didn't realize I didn't know how to be still anymore.  Do you?  Do you know how to be still?  Not just take a nap or a vacation or lounge for 30 minutes over a cup of coffee. To have nothing so pressing in your life more than the responsibilities of raising your family and being a godly spouse, being a true child of God.  No planned activities.  No family to call and invite over. Heck, with a three hour time difference, I find it difficult to even call my family! No church function to attend.  Nothing to volunteer for.  Just space and time and stillness....and God.

His presence is palpable in the Stillness. Seriously, sometimes I can almost physically feel my Jesus right beside me.

No, there is a deep, abiding stillness enveloping our lives here that requires we only follow God's cloud cover by day and His pillar of fire by night.  (Exodus 13:21) That's it.  Nothing more.  He's even provided all the manna we could ask for.  We have all we need.  Now, it's time to settle in to the stillness and follow God wherever He leads us next.  I'm trying not to search for anything more than that.  All it requires is my availability and courage to make myself available.  I'm not walking through any doors that God doesn't hunt and find and open for me.  No, my days of hunting and pecking and opening for myself have dwindled to a stopping point.

Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness of Midian with just his family.  He became intimately acquainted with the wilderness.  God used the wilderness to humble him and mold him.  He spent 40 years in Midian with only his wife and child to minister to him.  No one was probably more prepared to wander in the wilderness of Sinai that would come next more than Moses.  I wonder if he ever actually came to love it?  To call the wilderness home?

We all have a choice as to what wilderness we choose to sojourn.  Like Moses, we can allow the wilderness to mold us into who God wants us to be or like the Israelites we can moan and whine and complain and rage against a sovereign God, letting the wilderness kill us, heart, body, and mind.

I choose to be molded.  I choose to be wrapped in silence and stillness for as long as God sees fit because I think my heart has finally grasped the truth that I am NEVER truly alone. (John 16:32)  Loneliness is a lie from the devil.  Stillness is a rare treasure from God.

I should have been seeking for the stillness sooner.  I should have been seeking it not only for myself, but for my family.  I should have built a cocoon of stillness around our lives, creating a haven in my home where Stillness was honored, appreciated, and practiced, but I let the busyness of every day life dictate my "ministry" instead.

My family within the four walls of my home is my greatest ministry, and had God not physically removed me from my busyness in all things good and godly, I think I might have missed raising my children.  I think I might have missed the small conversations and teachable moments in the chaos of trying to remember where I had to be next at what time.  I think I might have missed connecting with them because I was too busy making sure they had a relationship with every other member of our families back East.  I think God saved my family from my own blind ambition by bringing us to California, by placing us in stillness.

(Deep Pause)

I am grateful for the stillness.  It is deep and warm and intimate here in the land of my sojourning. There are difficult days.  Days when you wish you were remembered.  Days when the thorn in your side of loneliness throbs deeply.  Days when you fight the antsy, urge in the bottom of your throat to just do something for the sake of doing something!

But no.  The lesson is to be still.  So be still I will learn to be.  As my favorite podcast coined, 'I'm going to sink down into this stillness and just BE.'

I'm going to sink down, sink in, and learn what it means to savor.  Savor time to snuggle with my kids and just watch TV together.  Savor time to pack a picnic and watch time pass as the sun settles into the ocean for bed.  Savor so much white space in my life that I can sit at my kitchen table and stare out my patio window for hours if I like, Bible open, heart open, ears listening.  I'm going to be still and savor.

And in His time, God will move me.  A burning bush will call me out of the stillness back into the fray.  You can be sure He will never let you get TOO comfortable=)  And my prayer is that when He calls, when I return from the stillness, I pray with all my heart I will not be the same woman who sits here typing today.  I pray I'm stripped of pride and filled with courage and faith. A deeper faith than I've ever known. I pray that I will have learned how to be a still person on the inside despite the circumstances whirling around me.

Which probably explains why my blogs have been so few and far between.  Dropping off the radar of life is not necessarily a bad thing.  It's definitely not a bad thing when you're being obedient to God's call.  For me, it means I'm careful about when and what and how I blog.  May God always get the glory!  For some, it may mean deleting that Facebook page, monitoring the number of hours you and your family spend on "screens" during the week, or maybe it means cutting down or cutting out extracurricular sports and activities in your life that you find yourself just doing because everyone else does it.  I think my pastor said it best this past Sunday. I want to spend my life doing less things of more importance than doing more things of less importance.  Let that sink in.

True Stillness requires sacrifice, which is why I believe it pleases God. (2 Samuel 24:24)

And should you choose to do the same, should you choose to drop off the radar of life in following of His obedience to a calling He's spoken to your heart, know that He is not through with you yet.  He's not benching you.  He's conditioning you.  And it's ok to quit everything and be still in your own home with your own thoughts with your God who loves you more than life itself if that's what He's calling you to do.

We need to learn how to practice stillness.

Praying you find the joy of the Lord in the stillness of His presence alone. (Psalm 16:11)