Sin, Confession, and Mercy

So, on the way home from Holly Ranch the other day, we were talking about our experiences during the Prayer Lab on Saturday morning and I was telling the girls in Ashleigh's car about how as I sat at the confession table and began making a list of my recent transgressions, God just sort of pushed all that to the side, pointed right at the deepest sin issue in my heart and told me He wanted to deal with that first. Bluch! It was not fun, but having that uncovered before Him and out in the open between us has given me so much hope as I seek to continue growing with the Lord in this season of my life. That's when our resident "Speaker of Truth" - Emily - asked me an excellent question that has stayed with me ever since. "So, Kristen, how are you going to let God deal with that sin issue? What's going to be different? How's that gonna look?" Ugh! I nearly choked trying to come up with an answer. I finally admitted I wasn't entirely sure except that I knew I had to stay tender before the Lord because it's primarily been an issue of hard-heartedness and refusal to honestly seek Him. The question has stayed with me, and today, I keep thinking back to the following passage from Micah 7 that I heard John Piper preach on earlier this year. Here's what it says ...

7 But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD,
I wait for God my Savior;
my God will hear me.
8 Do not gloat over me, my enemy!
Though I have fallen, I will rise.
Though I sit in darkness,
the LORD will be my light.
9 Because I have sinned against him,
I will bear the LORD's wrath,
until he pleads my case
and establishes my right.
He will bring me out into the light;
I will see his righteousness.

As Emily herself often reminds us, Satan is such a loser! He'd love for me to make my sin and my confession and my struggle to stay clean before the Lord to be about failure and about somehow letting him have victory over me, but it cannot be. When I sin, I sin against the Lord, the same God who has paid the ultimate price for me to be in right relationship with Him. What an incredible truth! I cast myself at His mercy today!

Jesus Loves Me

Some people would try to tell you that I'm a complicated woman, but I'm really not. It's truly the simplest things that bring me the greatest joys. A while back I wrote a post about the things for which I want to be remembered. During a Sunday morning service, the pastor had asked us to come up with what we wanted written on our tombstones, an activity designed to help us begin living with the end in mind. That was an easy one for me. Some time ago, more as a joke with my family than anything, I wrote down "funeral instructions" in a purple journal that included how I wanted to be remembered. When I am gone, I would like you to say, "Oh how she loved Jesus ... and oh how she loved me!"
This weekend, I spent about 24 hours on a retreat with the women who have been closest to me over the last year. On Saturday morning, we took time to write letters to each other in the journals we were given for the weekend. I read through the letters quickly on Saturday afternoon, but last night, when I got in bed, I took time to read them more slowly and really enjoy what my sisters had to say to me. It was so encouraging to find out that the things I've been striving to communicate in everything I say and do has been heard and felt in their lives. So many of them commented that they knew without a doubt that I love Jesus and several of them also commented about the fact that they felt very loved by me. And, in my heart, I thought "Victory!"
Saturday evening, in the course of testing a new database for work, a friend making up a bogus contact used the sentence "Kristen love Jesus" to test the field space. It was a simple, silly thing he probably didn't give much thought to at all, but it struck me that of all the things he could have typed in that space "Kristen loves Jesus" is what came to mind. And, I was thankful.
Today, another friend was making a joke about what each of us should have written on our bathroom mirror to encourage us each morning based on our personalities or funny things our friends belive to be true about us. His suggestion was that my mirror would read, "Somebody in heaven loves me."
That's when it really hit me. Yes, it's important that you know that I love Jesus and that I love you, but the greater truth is not that I love Jesus, but that Jesus loves me. This, I cannot do without.

Update

So, I know it's way past time to write, but I don't know where to start. God is doing a new thing, I'm just not exactly sure what that new thing is just yet. :-) It's been an insanely busy week this week at CCWJC, but I admit I'm learning lots every hour, and I'm thankful. Hopefully, sometime soon, I'll get around to putting some real thoughts down in writing and share them with you.