Scam Artist

Do you ever feel like a hypocrite? 

Yesterday morning in class I was just about ready to burst out in tears over the deep love for Jesus that was pumping through my heart! All I could think was "I love you Jesus, I really really love you!"

Then not so much later that evening I was in the shower and all I could think was "I just want to go out and get drunk." I even went so far as to whisper to Jesus (the same Jesus I just had professed my undying love to) "I think I'm done being a Christian, I don't want to be a Christian anymore, I am done."

What the crap!?

As I stood in the shower, I kept thinking to myself "I am scam artist, I am scam artist!" Here I am in the morning almost weeping with love for Jesus, and in the evening I am ready to forsake him for a night of debauchery. Here I am working for University Christian Ministry discipling young women, leading a bible study, and going to Regent College working towards becoming a pastor!!! 

You're kidding me right!?

I know that I have said this before, but really "God you have the wrong person for the job!"

OK I know that people throughout history have felt this before, like Moses and yada yada... 

But this time He really does have the wrong person!

I love Jesus. I really really really do, I know this to be true as the Spirit cries out "Abba, Father!" (Romans 8:15) 

BUT I also have the very real desires to do things that I know are harmful and do not please my Father, and sometimes I actually act on these very real sinful desires... 

So now do you see how I am scam artist, I am really not pastor material, because I have sins that don't just exist in my past, but they exist in the here and now, and they are some really deep, dark, and ugly sins!

So where does this leave us?

I don't know where this leaves you, but it leaves me DESPERATE! Crying out to me Father "Help me! PLEASE HELP ME!"

I echo the Apostles oh so wise and real words:

17-20 But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

21-23 It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

24 I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?

25 The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different

1-2 With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

3-4 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. (Romans 7:17 - 8:4 MSG)