Have you ever been trapped? Stuck somewhere, in something and you did not know if you were ever going to be able to escape? Maybe if you have ever gotten an MRI and you slide in that small space you freak out for a moment. I had a reoccurring dream where I was swimming in a long pool and there was a sea creature always coming to get me and I could never get away! (thankfully I always woke up before I died)
Sinning can make you feel like this. 'I did this sin again: I will never win!' Or maybe you just came to the realization that you sin a lot and you cannot handle it: 'how could God love me?' Or maybe you look around at the world and see how distraught and dysfunctional it is and lose all hope and want it all to be over. Either way, we can feel trapped by sin. We can feel like its avalanche has fallen on us and we are counting down our breathes underneath a city of snow.
The ironic thing is that if you are a follower of Jesus, you are trapped by God's love! You cannot escape IT. You are coffined in by it. You are drowned by it. Psalm 23 concludes with: goodness and mercy me are CHASING me. You're the Pac-man and God's grace is the little ghosts that will never stop--and they get you all the time. God's love is that avalanche, not sin.
You see, because of what Jesus has done in dying for you you are not guilty of your sin anymore! 'But you don't know me! I have dark sins that are huge that God cannot ever forgive if he had eternity to do so!' Maybe I don't know you and maybe you have some serious issues but God can and will forgive you if you'd just go to him. God not only created you but the entire world and universe, every galaxy. HE WILL FORGIVE YOU IF YOU GO TO HIM. Jesus became like us so that we could be with God again. He became human so we could be holy. He died so we could have eternal life. He loved so we could love. He suffered so we could be comforted in our suffering. He rose from death so we too could rise from death. He was counted and called 'CURSED!' so that he could BE US in death and ruin the effects of sin for us!
There is no sin too big, too hideous, too appalling, too odd and repeated that God cannot or will not forgive. How can this be? It is only because of Jesus' work for us. You're not going to be perfect . . . ever in this life. I sin a lot! Much more than I care to. Everyone sins a lot everyday. So let's go to our God and get some forgiveness today, for now our running is from God's mercy, not his wrath.
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