Our pastor has been preaching a series on the book of Ecclesiastes (Side note: everytime I see the word Ecclesiastes I think of my Senior English teacher, Mrs. Sanford - the first half of what a few of my friends and I referred to as the "Sanford Sandwich" which was 1st period English taught by Mrs. Sanford and 6th period Calculus taught by Mr. Sanford. Anyway, one of our vocabulary words that year was Ecclesia (or maybe it was Ecclesiastic) whose origins, according to Mrs. Sanford, are from the Greek word ekklēsía, meaning an assembly of citizens or a church...in case you were wondering.)
So back to the topic at hand:
I have always found the book of Ecclesiastes to be very encouraging but when Del started out with the idea that most people find the book to be depressing, frustrating, or discouraging I paused to do a brief mental check-up. Now, I know I'm a glass half-full kind of girl - it's genetically coded into my DNA (you should meet my parents) - but if everyone says something is depressing, discouraging or frustrating, that means that I'm either severely demented or I just don't get it. Three sermons into it, I finally figured it out. I had read the end of the book first! Woo Hoo! I'm not insane, I'm just impatient!! So my mind has footnoted all of this stuff about life being meaningless and tells me to wait until I get to the pay off at the end.
Yesterday I read a post on internetmonk.com (which is always good for a thought provoking discussion) titled the Devil's Sermon. Here's an excerpt, I encourage you to check out the full post:
August 10, 2009 by iMonk
Revelation 12:10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.
Jesus is the constant mediator. Jesus is the constant advocate.
Satan is the constant accuser.
The law of God also accuses our conscience. And the grace of God in the Gospel, Jesus himself, answers the law’s thunderings.
Satan has plenty to work with in the law, and in my life and yours. It is no wonder he accuses us “day and night” before God.
Have you thought what the devil would do if he took to the pulpit of a church?This post struck me particularly because of the sermon I heard on Sunday. I'm not calling out our assistant pastor on the methods with which he chose to illustrate his point - It was a good sermon. Near the end he asked us to take a moment to pray by ourselves and as I bowed my head the only words going through my head were "why do you keep screwing up?" And I asked for forgiveness and made my promises to do better in the future but it felt empty, you know? Because how many times have I been in this exact same place saying these exact same things making the exact same promises? I know I'll mess up and I'll start all over again. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. It felt like despair and as a "half-fuller" I am really bothered by that. I know I'm saved. I know I'm forgiven. I know what is required of me in order to gain my salvation (nothing, in case you were wondering). So why do I do I listen to the voices that tell me I'll never measure up so it's about time that I stop trying?
Someone once told me that it is possible to live a sin-free life. And I agree with that statement because if it wasn't, Jesus wouldn't have been able to do it (and my husband would run around the house pointing fingers, yelling "Cheater!" at the Son of God). That same person said that when the struggle with sin gets overwhelming then we should take one decision at a time and make the right one. Well, that's not entirely unreasonable. But what happens when you find yourself in the middle of a sin backlog? When the little things that don't seem like sin at the time kind of pile up and become overwhelming? Like my living room carpet that hasn't been vacuumed in who knows how long - not because I'm lazy but because we take our shoes off before we walk on it and when we drop something on the floor we pick it up but before long I'm dragging ottoman sized hair clumps from room to room by the soles of my feet and chasing after my husband with a Swiffer. What good does the "one decision at a time" theory do me then?
Shane and Shane had a song on their last album, Pages, called Embracing Accusation. It's a great song that at first I didn't like. I was only half listening to it in the car so I couldn't hear all of the words correctly and they kept saying something about the devil being right. Well, I can't get behind that kind of nonsense! Who do they think they are trying to fool? But the last part of the song goes like this:
Oh the devil’s singing over me
An age old song
That I am cursed and gone astray
Singing the first verse so conveniently
He’s forgotten the refrain
Jesus saves!
How could I have forgotten that I've read the end of this story already? I know how it started and it bummed me out - it still bums me out from time to time. But there's a big payoff in the last chapter that makes the rest worth it.
So here's to hoping that I remember that while I might screw up from time to time to time...and time again there's nothing that can lessen grace and anyone who says otherwise is a liar. I'll deal with my stuff as it comes up and cross my fingers that my efforts are not made out of guilt or despair but out of love and appreciation.
So there you go. This post is pretty much just a conglomeration of multimedia resources that happened to all intersect in my brain while at work this week. I'm not saying there's anything to it - but since I don't get to see or talk to all of you during the week I thought I would just throw it out there.
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