Something about it all seems so wrong. How can I ask Jesus to bail me out of the mess I have knowingly --many times, rebelliously --made? Do I overeat, consuming one thing after another until bags are empty and my soul feels full? Yes, but what else am I to do about my screaming insides and panicked mind? Do I over exercise, knees pierced with pain and back aching? Of course, but how else to undo what all of those calories have done. Do I overschedule, overdo, and overcompensate? How else am I to be enough? Do I mindlessly, mentally checkout, snapping and snarling when summoned from my self-made refuge? Why can't people handle their own business?
And now, here I am. I've established these habits and this way of doing life, but I'm finding myself powerless against these knee-jerk reactions. I know they're unhealthy. I know they're unholy. But from the first time I was tempted to avoidance and sloth, from the first time I succumbed to consumption as a means of sating some emptiness, from the first moment I used busyness or mind-numbing scrolling as bricks in a fortress around my fearful and insecure heart --from the first time I gave in, my sin began not only to wrap her claws around me in a deadly grip, but to further sink her claws in, resolved to never let me go. I was informed; I cannot say I was not. Don't give it a second look. Don't walk that path. But I chose it then. Fool around and find out. Searching for a way to cope, self-medicating then; only to find myself powerless against a self-destructive habit now. You made your choice. Indeed, I did. I opened that door. I begged sin to enter, to sit and keep me company, to be to me what only a true Savior can. But, at the time, I had no one, no one to model alternatives, no one to walk me through that mire in healthy, life-giving ways. Or did I just choose to hide my struggles, to bury my shame and go it alone? Nevertheless, fifty years later, I am living with ghosts and demons; ghosts who remind me why the demons are there, and demons who tell me they are in the ghost-busting business. But ghosts know only to haunt, and demons know only to lie. Who will save me from this grave? Is there any who would rescue? Will the God I have disobeyed, the God I dishonor each time I seek solace in the carnal --will He hold out His arms to me and welcome me home? Is it not the height of hubris to disregard His Word then call on Him when I am crushed under the weight of my own inability, when the famine has come and my stomach groans? Why should He deliver me from the mess I have made, from the entanglement into which I stepped all those years ago?
Isn't this what we are taught about the Father in the Parable of the Prodigal? This willful, disrespectful son, lost in the darkness of his self-seeking could not have returned home unseen and without the joy of his father. His father awaited his return; as does mine. This father pulled him to himself, kissing him with the affection of one to whom all is forgiven, and lavishing him with delight; as does mine. This father clothed him, gave him a symbol of sonship, and placed shoes on his feet, freeing him to leave home again, but intending for him to do so as his father's image bearer; as does mine. The father defended his returning son --not because he couldn't find fault, but because he chose not to do so; as does mine. The power of the Father to receive, delight, forgive, provide, and defend is the only power to which the powerless can come and be healed. Jesus does not "bail us out" --not the addict, the sinner, the faithless, the weak. He died in our place, in a great exchange: condemnation for righteousness, the Righteous for the condemned. It is greater than a bailout; it is new life, it is resurrection. Thanks be to God!
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