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Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Sinners Anonymous



There have been several events in the last couple of weeks that have finally driven me to write this very real and very raw blog. The driving force behind this post is a quote from Beth Moore's new book, Audacious:


     God knows exactly how real or pretentious our faith is. But we don't. That's the thing. Neither do the people in our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our social environments, or our spheres of influence. Neither do angels or demonic principalities. God tests us to bring out the real us. He tests us to prove our faithfulness to Him in front of a devil who bets we're fakes. God tests us to prove us genuine to "a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us" (Heb. 12:1). For crying out loud, He tests us to prove us genuine to ourselves, the last ones to usually know. God knows what is inside you. That's the person He's trying to surface. If He's knocking the cover off of you, He's trying to get to the light.


This quote hit me like a ton of well-worded bricks.

It made me actually look at myself. Ew... and what I saw, I hated. 

There was a series of events that led other people to open up to me about their EW factors and that's when this thought blazed across my brain...


WHAT IF...
we approached our Christian walk as a recovery program instead of a beauty pageant?


Because as it stands right now, Christianity looks more like a beauty pageant every day. We gather in large numbers for a show. We gather to look on a whole lot of fake. There's a lot of makeup, self-tanner, hair spray, and scripted answers. If you grew up in a Southern church, I probably just described your Momma circa 1985... bless her heart. 

What if we ALL recognized that we are sinners. What if we ALL realized that we ALL fall short of the glory of God. What if we ALL actively supported each other in our quest to fight back against our sinful nature? What if we could openly gather and say, "hello, my name is Catherine... and I have a sinful nature."

What if we could gather into a group that wouldn't judge us based on the words and confessions that would fall out of our mouths. What if we could gather into a community of believers where we laid it all out on the table. What if we could say, "hello, my name is Catherine... and I have a sinful nature. I fail daily, but you guys know that. Today was really hard, I wanted to turn to my old habits of ___________." And then... what if we talked about the triggers of our sinful nature: lying, gossiping, pornography, substances, anger, sexual acts, homosexual tendencies. What if talked about the person under the makeup, beneath the hair, behind the scripted answers. Do you not see it all around you? Do you not see the addicts, the anxious, and the adulterous in the pews beside you? 

We are so delusional to think that ANYBODY has it all together. We put on a show.

You may be fooling everyone around you, but Satan is betting his bottom dollar on your fake. 


Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery programs have a 12 step program:

  1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
  11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

What if we replaced "alcohol" with "sinful nature"?


1. We admitted we were powerless over our sinful nature—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.


Folks... the first steps here are the first steps in how you become a Christian. Admitting that you're powerless over sin and that a Power greater than yourself is the only thing that can restore you. Then, you make a DECISION to turn your will and your life over to God.


4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Once you've made the decision, there's got to be follow through. You admit to God that you need Him, and you ready yourself to have Him remove the defects of character. You humble yourself and ask Him to remove your shortcomings. You recognize you can't do this alone. You no longer rely on just you anymore. You've enlisted Him to come aboard and help you wrangle this monster.

 
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

I think it would be awesome if we as Christians kept inventory of the people we hurt as a result of our sinful nature and actually asked them for their forgiveness. Matthew 5:23-24 talks about leaving your offering on the alter if you remember that someone has something against you, and going to fix it before continuing. Promptly admit your shortcomings. We have a hard time doing that as a society.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others of  sinful nature, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Once we realize that our sinful nature hurts others as well as ourselves, we can begin the process of healing. We can't help that we're born sinners. What we can help, is that we can be saved by grace. We can pray for His will for us and carry it out. Once we're working on ourselves, we can gather with others who are also working on themselves... recognizing that this fight against our sinful nature is never ending. 

We're all struggling with something, none of us are perfect, no, not one!

What if we were real and raw. What if we sat down together as a support group, as a body of believers and said, "I'm here for you... spill."

It's not a beauty pageant, but if we own this fight against our sinful nature, we could ALL wind up with crowns. 

My name is Catherine Rhoades... and I have a sinful nature.