My life is just one big mess, like paint splattered on a wall. What’s more, yours probably is, too. Ask anyone, at the right time, or the wrong time, and they feel as though they are a failure. There is a theory that most people mess up their lives and have to seek a fresh start every twenty years. I’m a few years away from my next fresh start.
Yet, unless we live our lives in total dependence upon Jesus Christ, we are bound to make it a mess; it is inevitable. Personally, my biggest problem is that I am afraid when I am not in control. When I am in control, then I ruin things. I have often admitted that my only problems in life are those I have created myself.
Once I have ruined things, I am then too ashamed to ask forgiveness of my Savior, and, like Adam, I hide from Him until I reach a point of desperation.
That is no way to live.
In the Life and Letters of Brother Lawrence, the monk reveals that he had ruined his life. He does not detail his failings, buts makes it clear that his life as a soldier was a shambles. This is what led him to retreat into a monastery and dedicate himself to service to Christ. In the monastery, he washed dishes, repaired shoes, did whatever needed to be done. Yet, even in the face of such tedious labor, he learned to pray and to trust God. In fact, he learned to pray continuously, to carry on intimate conversations with Christ, daily, hourly, minute by minute.
The key to an such an intimate relationship with Christ, he said, is to seek heart-felt forgiveness at every single spiritual failing.
An examination of the life of King David, a “man after God’s own heart,” reveals that he, too, knew how to ask forgiveness. Sure, he would deny his sin for a time; he was human. Yet, once his sin was revealed, he sought divine forgiveness. He repented.
I must learn to stop running, and to readily repent and seek forgiveness. That is the key to a daily walk in Christian holiness.
Leave a Reply