Why Not Me?

I met Bernie about 24 years ago. He was a character! Bernie had retired from the Navy and was living in a large home up a driveway in the woods and he was always drunk. Carrie, his wife, lived with him and she was not a drunk. She was a Christian who prayed for Bernie every day that he might be saved and sober.

It was wonderful that, by the time I met Bernie, God had answered Carrie's prayers. Bernie was saved and sober and in charge of a ministry reaching out to others that were trapped as he had been. I was trapped when I met Bernie and it became a matter of envy and sometimes anger that God had delivered Bernie and that I remained unchanged. 

Bernie was not perfect BUT it did not take much time with him to know that Bernie was a new creature in Christ and I envied this. I had gone through all the same processes (I thought) and said the same prayers. I even got, what I believed was, the baptism of the Holy Spirit and yet I was not a new creature. 

So I found myself praying I John 1.9 over and over again and trusting that Proverbs 24.16 would someday be true for me. Yet I continued in my sin. How I longed to be free of the bondage of sin but I was powerless over it. I had only brief periods of victory divided by periods of the deepest and vilest sin. Bernie was a new creature but I most certainly was not. Why not me?

I was involved in what I wanted to believe was a walk of faith but it was actually a walk of fraud. I had come to even fool myself such was the deceit of my heart. All of this actually only confirmed what God has said about man. He knew long before I ever entered the scene of human history that this was the condition of the unsaved man and would be my condition unless He intervened.

If a man is to be a new creature it must be the work of God for most certainly it can never be, will never be, the work of man. All the works of man are reeking, filthy rags. I knew this and I found myself trapped in sin with no way out. Even God, I thought, had failed me. He had changed Bernie but I was not. God had rejected me just like I felt my earthly father had rejected me.

So I went through the motions. What else could I do? I was married, had one child and knew that I was responsible for these two others in life. So I hid my sin like Achan (Joshua 7) but it was not hidden from God. It affected my family and became a curse to us. It sucked any victory from my life and caused me to become a legalistic nut with  dictatorial relationships when I should have been loving and nurturing. 

My sin shut me off from real relationships and I was alone; without God and without any human help. Because I was not real I could have no real relationships. Those that I had were unsatisfactory because they could not meet the needs that I had, needs that only God could satisfy. I became unfair to others, demanding that they meet needs that God never intended and in doing so I drove many away. My dear, dear wonderful wife stayed faithful but it was not an easy journey for her. I do not blame those who jumped ship. Who would not?

I found myself dreading life but too self centered, too obsessed or “too something”, maybe too chicken, to end it. I had no choice but to go on as best as I could and each day and night followed one another with an endless smoldering anger and resentment towards others and towards God. How I longed to be free from myself but I could not be. Even if I left my family I would still have me and “me” was the problem. I knew it.

I took comfort in my wife and family, in the company of those saved and in the society of church but it was only the comfort of association not of real participation. At least it was some comfort in my sojourn. Looking back I am glad for that, it was God’s mercy to a lost man. Isn’t He good to even the lost? Yes, He is. He causes blessings even to the lost.

It was in March of 2012, right before I turned sixty, that a man who loved me, confronted me with my sin and then had the guts and the leading of the Holy Spirit to tell me that he loved me.

Here I was, finally real with someone, not by choice, not by any confession or even repentance on my part and he was saying he loved me. This I had to deny. It was not possible, no one could love me as I was, he was lying. He had to be. But then as the days past I was confronted by my God! My Heavenly Father who also told me He loved me, He said “I love you, I won’t leave you” 

When I accepted His love I found I could accept the love of everyone else and not only that but I had a love too. A love I never knew before. People I had hated suddenly I found myself loving! This was a shocker to me. Then I found that the old sin had no more power over me. I did not want to sin. This was incredible. 

It was during this time that I came to know with an absolute certainty that what had happened to me was what had happened to Bernie! I had gotten saved. I was a new creature in Christ Jesus, new things were coming to be true in my life and God was changing me! My sojourn was over.

Today I am still growing. I still struggle with sins. Gossip, anger and the such BUT I also know love, joy, peace, self control. Things only the Holy Spirit could give to a man. Things that God in His rich mercy now is portioning out to me with and through His generous Spirit. Oh I am free! Praise be to God, to Jesus and His Spirit, I am free. I am at rest in Him. There is hope for the hopeless and it is in Christ Jesus who made the way to Peace. Come join me.