From Shadows to Grace

SPEAKER 01 : 0:05

There’s a little more to be said regarding this message that Paul is telling us here about the Gentiles who didn’t pursue righteousness by faith found it, whereas the Jewish people who sought it by the law did not find it. They stumbled over Jesus. That is in Romans 9, verses 30 to 32. And we’ve been talking about this issue of righteousness by faith for several days now from a psychological and spiritual point of view. I talked about last time the three pains. The pain of being human, that is a fallen human being. Everybody who comes into this world is in a fallen state, a broken state, a wounded state, so that our mind doesn’t think properly, our emotions don’t line up with our mind, our mind… with our emotions, and we are out of sync with God and ourselves, because when we are in a suppressed state, which is what Paul describes the whole world to be in, in Romans 1, verses 18, mankind is in suppression. When we are in a suppressed state, we are separated not only from God, but from ourselves, because we were made in the image of God. We were meant to have fellowship and relationship with Him. So that’s the first pain. And the second pain is the woundedness of our childhood. Some of you have been abused. I can’t say myself I wasn’t abused or neglected. Some of you had an illness that marred your sense of self. That was in my case with the polio when I was a year old. And some people have experienced divorce or the death of a parent that has created a tremendous trauma. And that carries through into our adulthood unless it is intercepted by healing grace, the work of kind and loving people. And so when we carry that wound, we now have a double pain. We have the pain of our humanness, Piled on top of that is the pain of our woundedness. And that leads so many people, every human being really, but they’re not, well, let me put it this way, it causes human beings to escape. And those escapes are sometimes described as addiction, but some of them are so, quote, respectable, end quote, like working hard and long, we don’t always realize it’s an addiction. So the pain of being human, exacerbated by the pain of our wounded childhood, leads us to escape into drugs or alcohol or food issues or sexual issues. But those escapes are merely temporary. And the fact is that not only are they merely temporary, but after they have faded completely, they leave more pain behind, don’t they? Because we feel guilty or ashamed or afraid and that we’re not in control of life and our life is going down the sink, etc. Those are the three pains. But we talked about how faith in Jesus Christ enables us to face these things. The first thing is that when we have faith in Jesus, we are having faith in the fact that he died on the cross and took the judgment of all humanity. And so that atoning sacrifice of Christ… is what enables us by faith to not let the pain of being human devastate us. We can say, Lord, I know I’m a sinner. I know that I have failed you and that I have a failed humanity that just doesn’t function properly. I get into obsessive compulsive behavior or addictions or selfishness or anger or moodiness. And Father, I don’t know what to do with it, but I thank you that I am not condemned for it. and I praise you that it is not charged against me. Now that kind of faith is bold, it’s courageous, it can only happen when people put their faith in Christ, because otherwise guilt is overwhelming, let me tell you. But it is amazing and wonderful how when we praise God for the atoning work of Christ on our behalf, the pain of being human lessens. But what about the other pains? Well, the pain of woundedness. Well, since there is no condemnation, and since we have an access to the Father through Jesus Christ, we are able to talk to God about those pains of woundedness that we often confuse with the pains of our sinful nature. you understand that if you confuse a pain of woundedness with the pain of your sinful nature, you can’t get rid of it, because we’ll never get rid of our humanness until Jesus Christ comes the second time and gives us immortality and incorruptibility. And so, once we know the atoning work of Christ, we can bring these pains of our woundedness to him. Well, what do we do with them? Well, first of all, we talk about them. We talk about them to God. Lord, I never did talk to you about the pain of being abused as a child. I just felt so ashamed. I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it. But now I’m willing to talk about it because I realize there’s no condemnation. You allow me to open my heart up to you. Now, what does that do? Well, the first and most major thing it does is to make you realize you are not alone. You remember several days ago I talked about soul isolation, the soul going silent. The soul goes silent because it feels it’s being charged with guilt and shame. If we are feeling guilty and ashamed of things that happened to us, even though they were not our fault, well, we will clam up, we will close down. And when we do that, we are in soul isolation, and it makes the woundedness of our childhood much more severe. But now we have faith in our Lord Jesus. We know that he has brought us to the loving heart of our Heavenly Father. He has given us access to this grace in which we stand, as Paul says in Romans 5, verses 1 and 2. And we now can talk to God about these things. And we must name them. Don’t use vague clinical language. Use accurate, realistic language that is language of the heart. God will not be offended. God has gone through the whole gamut of what human beings have gone through, and he knows what it’s all about. And so when you’re sharing these things with God, you realize that now you have a companion with whom you can talk about these things. They have less impact, less power. Why is that? Because the real power of a woundedness is not the woundedness itself, but the fear and the guilt we associate with it, which leads us to clam up and close down. But now we’re talking to God. Lord, I’m ashamed to talk about this to you, and yet I will not be ashamed. I will thank you that Jesus took my shame on the cross, and that I am accounted as if I were a righteous man. I thank you, Lord God, that you act towards me as if I were good. Now, as you start doing this, as you start this conversation with God about your woundedness, you’re going to realize gradually that there is an actual blessing in what you went through. Now, some people will mightily object to that and say, Colin, how could you possibly say that? I have never seen anything good in what happened to me. Well, I’m not asking you to see it now, but just talk to God about what you went through, and gradually something will turn up. Something will change. What will change is your perception of what happened. Not that it’s good. It was an evil. But the point is, God, our Heavenly Father, through His Holy Spirit and through Jesus Christ, His Son’s sacrifice, comes to us in the evil things that happen to us and transforms their effects. So that as we look back on these things, we begin to realize, perhaps, for instance, that, well, that terrible thing that happened to me actually brought me to God. or it made me more compassionate towards others who are wounded. Do you see what I’m saying? That you slowly, as the guilt is ripped off and the shame and the fear, you begin to see other dynamics that were happening at the same time, which you could not see at all at the time it happened, because evil was happening to you. But aside, that was God’s grace, working through that evil to bring blessing to you. And so, slowly, we begin to reinterpret the terrible things that happened to us. If you have a half a dozen major events in your life that you consider tragedies, well, keep opening them up to God and talking to God about them, and you will see over a time period that a transformation is taking place, and those six things that happened to you that were tragedies you will begin to see God’s grace in them, and you will begin to give thanks for allowing them to happen. I know it’s a shock to many of you, and I know it will be an offense, but you will begin to give thanks for the tragedies that have been inflicted upon you because they have God’s grace within them to reveal himself. And so life changes. Your life, your perception of things changes. Now then comes the third pain, which is the escape from pain by addiction. You say, Colin, I just can’t stop. I just can’t stop doing what I’m doing. I know. But I’m going to ask you, as I did the other day, to talk to God in the very midst and desire that you’re going through, the lust that you are experiencing. Talk to him. Lord, I can’t give this up. I don’t feel like giving it up. I don’t want to give it up. I don’t want to surrender it to you. But I must talk to you that you are there. And I am with you in this mess that I’m in. And I will talk to you, even though I feel blaspheming by talking to you. But if I step away from you, if I block you, I will do worse. And so, Father, I must talk to you. I thank you that you do not abandon me. I thank you that you stay with me in this evil that I’m in until I can walk out of it with you. Now, that may seem utterly unthinkable for most Christians. But it’s the gospel. You say, how do you know? Romans 4, verse 5. God justifies, that is, declares innocent, the ungodly. The King James Version says God justifies the wicked. God declares, counts the wicked innocent. righteous. He treats them as if they were righteous, as they trust in him. So trust in him. Lord, I know what I am doing is wicked. I can’t say no to it, but I will not say no to your presence. I will open my heart up to you until I can walk away. And you will often find that you can walk away. And if you don’t walk away, you will often find the failure isn’t as devastating as it was before. And gradually you will begin to see that there is freedom of action which you never knew before in your addictions. Thank you. 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