UPDATE: My apologies. Part Three has been unavoidably delayed (perhaps this weekend?) due to busy days and a need to breathe.

Part One can be found here.

Can’t you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do—submit to circumcision, reject circumcision. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life! — Gal 6:15

Pleasing God was the ultimate goal of my life for as long as I can remember. Yet I always seemed to come up short. No matter what I did I could not find the magical ingredient that allowed me to feel I pleased Him or was worthy of His love. It never occurred to me that trusting Him with all of me was far more important to God than all my striving to please Him. Yet over the last few years God’s persistent question to me has been, "do you trust Me? Will you trust Me?"

Recently Jesus began applying this question to my sin. Do I trust, will I trust, that His personal specific sin-intervention also applies to every sin I have done and will do as a follower of Christ?  This is a difficult concept for a woman who grew up believing she bore sole responsibility for keeping herself from sin. Moreover, that when I did sin it separated me once again from God, building a wall between God and me that only I could tear down (through repentance). Turns out that was a lie from— well, you figure it out — that even my parents and Sunday School teachers seemed to believe. For they drilled it into me over and over — "sin separates us from God."

But the truth is, once we are followers of Jesus nothing, nothing can separate us from Him. Nothing. Not even our sin. He is stuck like glue, like green on grass, and never, ever leaves. Did you know He stays with me and talks to me even as I’m sinning? Okay, that’s just weird. Don’t you think? I never imagined God would do such a thing. Yet He does. Perhaps He always did and I was just hiding so far back in the dark that I couldn’t see Him or hear Him whispering, "please stop! Please don’t hurt my little girl!"

This whole idea is difficult enough for me to digest but there’s an even more perplexing question Jesus has started asking. "Will you trust me with your temptation? Maybe next time it hits you could bring it to me, talk to me about it. We could fight it together."

Shut. Up.

Jesus wants to be a part of my sin-resistance process?? He actually wants to help me "resist" or "flee" temptation? But wait. Doesn’t Scripture say that I must do that myself, that that’s my job? Turns out it doesn’t and I was never meant to do it alone. Who knew? Trying to do so actually negates Christ’s work on the cross –didn’t think of that, either.

Yeah but I thought He gave me power through the Holy Spirit so He wouldn’t have to get personally involved. He did, but it turns out that that "power" comes in the form of His personal presence.  He actually personally shows up to help in the resistance. He wants us to resist together, using His power and my willingness to try. That’s kind of like asking for an autographed picture of George Clooney and having him personally show up for dinner instead. —-Mmm… let me ponder that image a moment longer… — Too cool for words!

Side note: I realize there is a contradiction in theology in the above paragraph. I know the Holy Spirit is God. So if He gave me His Spirit, it naturally follows that it’s really God that I have. But here’s the thing: that knowledge never made it from my head to my sin-entangled soul. And I think this is rather indicative of how most Christians live: thinking one thing in their head while living out another with their lives because their souls never got the message. I always knew the Holy Spirit was God, yet I still believed that the Spirit-power within me was really only an extension of my own salvation, not truly "Christ. In. me." I certainly did not view it as God personally showing up in and for my every sin, or aiding me in resisting it.

Here’s the bottom line. If you get nothing else out of this series, hear this: God’s greatest desire is that you would trust Him with every part of you, no matter how ugly or ungodly you may think it is. He wants you to trust Him with your life, yes, but more than that, with yourself; with who you are at the core of your being and in the darkest, most secret places of your soul. He is tireless in His efforts to convince you of His trustworthiness and relentless in His pursuit of your trust. And if you will trust Him with you — even just a little part — you will find a full partnership that brings freedom to be who you really are without any masks or any fear of condemnation or judgment. Even when you sin.

Part Three coming soon.

Answer this question: Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? — Gal 3:5 The Message

I grew up believing that pleasing God is the ultimate goal of every Christian; that it should be the be-all-end-all of our existence. Church, and my parents, taught me that I am here on this planet to give glory to God. And the only way to do that is to do whatever it takes to please God. The problem is I cannot do anything to please God no matter how much I strive. Whatever I do falls short. Believe me, I’ve tried. I tried my whole life.

I grew up in church. As the daughter of a minister my life was a daily Sunday School and I was expected to be the best student. Don’t get me wrong, I relished the role. I’ve always liked being the teacher’s pet. So I took everything I heard, quickly applied it to my life and tried hard to be that perfectly pleasing "living sacrifice" for God. I believed that I must work hard to be holy and not sin and that when I do sin, even as a follower of Jesus, it hurt Hims and separates us and that it is up to me to make it right and get our relationship back on track. But I always completely failed.

If I heard that same thing from a non-Christian — that she couldn’t stop sinning or be holy — I’d immediately comfort her by pointing out that scripture clearly says you cannot do it; you cannot cleanse yourself of sin nor keep yourself from sinning. And I believe that is true for everyone who does not have a relationship with Jesus. But for all the good teaching I got as a child, I still came up with a screwy idea that Christians are somehow different and those scriptures don’t apply. I was convinced that once I was "saved" I now had the power and responsibility to keep (or save) myself from sinning, to make myself holy and pleasing to God. Turns out I don’t and I can’t. And this is where trusting God comes in.

This Easter God began reshaping the way I look at the cross, at redemption, forgiveness and grace. That day — and every day since — Jesus insisted that His death and resurrection, forgiveness, grace and redemption were meant specifically for me, and not just for everyone who believed — a surprisingly hard idea for me. I’d  been trained since birth to "think about others" and to "consider others as better than" myself. That translated to me as: godly and holy things like salvation and redemption are not personal, not personally inscribed with my name on it. Rather, they are for everyone in general. But it turns out that’s not true. It is personal. It is specific. It really does have my name on it. Here’s the truth:

Every last one of our names has been personally carved into the cross by Jesus Himself and if we were to look closely at it we would see our own name — Larry, Marti, Joe, Niza, Dorcas, Emily, Art, Katherine, KatRose, Lu…. — carved into the wood and covered in blood, forever marking our redemption.

But apparently Jesus didn’t stop with a one-time redemption; it wasn’t a once-only intervention of sin that leaves us, His adopted children and followers, now on our own to solve our sin problems. That personal specific sin-intervention seems to also apply to every sin I have done and will do as a follower of Christ. Many times since Easter I’ve brought my sin to God, broken and remorseful that "I did it once again," fully expecting Him to be disappointed or annoyed that I haven’t yet gotten it right. Only to have Him gently, lovingly declare, "that’s what the cross is for. Don’t worry about it anymore. But maybe next time you come talk to me when temptation hits? We could fight it together." What a completely foreign idea.

Part Two can be found here.

Another snippet from TrueFaced.

God is not interested in changing you. He already has. The new DNA is set. God wants you to believe that he has already changed you so that he can get on with the process of maturing you into who you already are. Trust opens the way for this process… If you do not trust God, you can’t mature, because your focus is already messed up. You’re still trying to change enough to be labeled godly.

The goal of my whole life, since I was first saved at the age of six, has been to "change" or transform into the person God wants me to be. I’d never heard, not until I moved to Nashville and began counseling here, that I already am the person God is pleased with.

Perhaps I’m getting this wrong. Perhaps I’m not reading TrueFaced or Abba’s Child correctly. At least, I still have trouble believing my eyes as I read the words. And yes, in true Lu form (which I stole from my friend Bing), these books sail across the room rather frequently because of what I read within. It just does not seem possible that 42 years of lessons deeply ingrained into my soul could be so wrong. But then there it is again:

A healthy response to the question, Who am I? is, "I am a person already deeply pleasing to God."

Could this be true? Do you believe this about yourself? Could this possibly be real? Does God delight in me just because I am, and not because I do?

The funny thing about me asking this even now is that the last five years have been non-stop experiences that drive this… truth?… home. Over and over God has shown me that His love and pleasure have nothing to do with what I do and everything to do with who I am. Yet even now my spirit resists such a simple yet life-altering idea. Maybe its because it takes control (such as it is) of my life and my sin out of my hands. It means I am no longer responsible for my own goodness, righteousness, loveliness, holiness. And it means I can no longer take credit for, or solace in the credit for, such things. God is the one responsible for what is in me and who I am. Because He made me.

This is a hard one for a girl like me, who’s lived all these years outwardly claiming a grace-based life in Christ but inwardly trapped in a works-based paradigm.

I’ve gotten quite a few hits on my site from people Googling (or
Yahooing, but that just doesn’t sound right, does it) TrueFaced. That
brings me a lot of hope, because it is quite a book.

I have a lot of
thoughts swirling in my head from reading this book, and conflicting feelings as I read and contemplate. I’m sure it’s causing many others to feel the same. That’s good. We need to be shaken from our paradigm trees from time to time; perhaps we’ll find a new, better one to climb up and rest in a while.

In light of all this, I set up a category specifically for TrueFaced so that as I
journey through this—what I hope to be a maturing process—those searching for more on the book can come along.