The Day Jesus Left Me

God is perfect.  

God cannot stand in the presence of sin.

I sin.

God cannot be with me when I sin.

Anyone ever follow this logic?  I did.  For...well, forever.  I'd lie in bed, sinning up a storm (minds are nasty little betrayers sometimes), and I knew -- knew -- that God had left me.  I was confident that He had to go away for a while until I'd gotten a grip.  Because God cannot stand in the presence of sin, and behold!  Sin!  He could come back tomorrow, after I'd gone to sleep and forgotten about my little "episode" with pride or worry or lust or anger the night before.

But wait, logic began to whisper, if He can't stand in the presence of sin, then why in the world was His company of choice on earth the sinners?

And how about the fact that He's omnipresent?  Doesn't thinking He flees from sin defy His very nature?

The problem, I think, is our phrasing.  "God can't stand in the presence of sin."  That's not a verse, by the way, I'm putting it in quotes because I've heard it said that way so many times.  It is true that God cannot allow sin into His perfect, heavenly kingdom.  It is true that He Himself does not sin.  But do you see what we've done to God with that one little phrase?  We've turned Him into a child in a PG-13 movie, covering His ears and eyes so that He won't be traumatized.  We've diminished Him, made Him fearful, made it seem as though He runs and hides, shrieking and screaming whenever He sees sin.

But that's not what a king does when he sees his enemy.  He doesn't sheath his sword and run away, saying, "I can't look at you!  Not listening!  Not listening!"  No!  When the king sees his enemy, he draws his sword, he fights, and he conquers.

And the same goes in our lives.  When Christ sees us sinning, He doesn't get a nervous look and timidly back out of the room, saying, "See you in the morning, I need some time to center and recover from this."  He draws His sword.  He's ready to fight.  And if He fights, He'll win.

But what if we think He's not there?  He's standing, waiting to come defend us, waiting to avenge His beloved, and we're mourning His absence, wondering why it's worth it to obey a God who leaves every time we screw up.  We're fighting alone.  Fighting and failing.  Failing and waving goodbye to Someone who's still there.

It's backwards, you see.  For years, I thought that the fear of Jesus leaving every time I sinned would be enough to prevent me from messing up.  Didn't help.  I'd fall anyway.  But everything changed the day I realized, He won't leave me, even if I fall.  Suddenly I loved Him more...because the Jesus who stays to fight and defend is more loveable than the wimpy, "Sorry, gotta go" god I'd created.  Suddenly I wanted to please Him more.  Suddenly, I had access to the very power of Christ while fighting temptation.

Suddenly, I wasn't losing nearly as often.  Fear wasn't strong enough to combat temptation.  A real and powerful God with a heart to rescue and save -- well, He was.

Grace isn't Jesus forgiving you after you've muddled through a few hours without Him, long enough that you both just kinda "forgot" about what you were doing.  Grace is the fact that you never fight alone, even when you fall.  Grace is the fact that He doesn't leave, even when you fail Him.  Grace is the fact that He not only stood in the presence of sin; He became sin.  And in so doing, He defeated it -- defeated it so thoroughly that you don't have to sin anymore.

But He won't leave even if you do.

So the day Jesus left me -- it didn't exist.  Even while I was pretending He wasn't there, He was living "to make intercession" for me, He who is able to save to the uttermost (Hebrews 7:25, NKJV).

God is perfect.

God cannot abide sin.

I sin.

God loves me too well, and hates sin too much, to leave me to fight it alone.

Revive

My last nights at home before returning to school from Christmas break, I read through my old journals.  They started the day I turned 13, and read right up to the present.  Sometimes entire months, even years, were missing from their pages.  But what was there was dramatic and random and sometimes downright hilarious in its youthful confusion.  I was convinced at age 13 that I would be a professional dancer and poured all my prayers into trying to convince God of the same thing.  If you went to high school with me, there's probably a prayer for you in the pages of my journals, so if you need to know on what day you had a crisis, I've gotcha covered.  If anyone has any idea who I had a crush on in the first half of 11th grade, please enlighten me, because I've completely forgotten the identity of this all-important "him" who is namelessly prayed for (and by "for" I mean, "for me, he needs to be mine").

There is so much contradiction and hypocrisy and earnestness and exaggeration in these pages that I can hardly read them without being torn between laughing and crying.  I was a mess.  I wrote so many things that I firmly and whole-heartedly believed in, wanting to live by them until the end...and mere weeks later, I was thanking God for circumstances that totally contradicted the lifestyle I had claimed to want.

My journal probably knows more about me than my mom (and she knows a lot).  But Jesus knows even more.  He knows each word before I pen it; He knows the words that never make it to the page, the ones engraved into my heart that I can't fully grasp enough to bring out.  That's a little daunting.  What's He seen?  What's He thinking about?  Are there sins I haven't even confessed because I can't remember them??  Woe is me!!

Perspective.

"I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him."  -Isaiah 57:18

I have seen his ways...

...but I will heal him.

I just want to breathe that in for a minute.

I have seen his ways.  I know.  I saw it happen.  I knew it was going to happen.  I cried.  It was awful.  I wish he hadn't done it.

But I...will...HEAL him.

Look at a little context: "For this is what the high and lofty One says -- He who lives forever, whose Name is holy: 'I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite...I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him...Peace, peace, to those far and near.'"  -Isaiah 57:15,18,19b

What??

Praise Him, for He knows and He heals.  He sees and He comforts.  He is holy but He dwells with the lowly.  He's read my journals and He's read between the lines, and He's seen the times I've hurt myself and others and Him, and He heals.

He heals.  There is no chain so strong it cannot be broken by the blood and the power of the High and Lofty One, no place so far that He cannot speak peace to you there.  He loves you...He will heal you.

He healed me.