You know what God wants from you? Not your holiness. Not your perfection. Not your righteousness. All these things He gives to you as a result of faith in Jesus. They are not things we give to Him.
Even our love, obedience, and worship are tainted and twisted with selfishness and pride. All our righteous acts are like menstrual cloths (Isa 64:6). Yes, that is what the verse says.
So what can we give God? The only things we have: our crap.
The pain, anger, suffering, frustration, disappointment, and fears we face in life. God wants that.
He also wants the addictions, the failures, the mistakes, and the sin.
We often think that God wants us to stop sinning, but what He really wants is for us to give our sin to Him. We will not and cannot stop sinning until we do so.
Here is how it works:
The only contribution you can ever make to your redemption is your sin. It is the one gift God will accept from you. It is a trade God will make–His holiness for your crap. Paul says that Jesus became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21). That is the only trade we can make, and the only trade God will accept.
And what does God do with your garbage when you give it to Him?
He turns it into riches. He transforms it. Redeems it. Sanctifies it. He turns your crap into holiness.
It becomes Holy Crap.
This is something only God can do. He takes your failures, mistakes, addictions, and turns them into something beautiful and powerful for use in His Kingdom. When we give God our sin, He takes whatever it is in our lives that leads us to that sin, and purifies it, then gives it back to us to be used for His glory and His kingdom.
So what gift will you give God today? Your righteousness, which is really just filthy, bloody, putrid rags anyway? Or the crap of your failures, mistakes, addictions, and sin? It’s the latter that He wants.
i have lots to give how about you? 🙂
I do believe you have hit the nail on the head. Very good.
Thanks Josiah.
That’s it right on the money. It’s not within our power at all, but I still think we can impede progress 🙂
Definitely we can impede our progress. And I think this process here is repeated every time we are faced with our sin.
Love the flow chart! I have seen a correlation between brokenness and Godliness in people. Those who are the most Godly seem to have been the most broken either by their own sin or the sin of others. Either way, there is junk that needs to be turned over to God.
It seems a little weird to put theology on a flow chart. It’s so….dead. Or western.
Either way, we can still turn over our junk to God, as you say.
I should have mentioned in my comment above that I placed a link to this post with comment at http://wp.me/p1vxe9-bS. I also added Till He Comes to my blogroll.
Keep posting.
By the way, are we allowed to use the “C” word on a Christian Blog? I don’t want to get boycotted or something for using bad language.
The “C” word?
At first I didn’t know what you were talking about. I thought, “Does he mean ‘Christian’?”
Ha! That shows how I think…
Thanks for the link to my blog. I will add you to mine as well.
@Mark: Great point..and those who’ve had the most suffering as well. Remember “Blessed are the poor”..I’ve seen more “real” Christians in the slums rather than in the suburbs.
Absolutely great post! I think I’ll re-blog it if you don’t mind.
I have already done a couple of others and redirecting back to ‘Till He Comes’ also I have you on my blog roll.
David,
Thank you very much. Feel free to re-blog it. Just include a link back to here.