Happy Sunday everyone!
I know this newsletter is a bit late. I didn’t quite finish it this week and I didn’t want to rush through it just to get it up in time. So rather late than never! I hope you enjoy xx
During the holiday I help my church out with their Holiday Club program. It was a week of taking care of kids, teaching them about the Lord and creating a space for them to have fun. I was placed with the grade R girls. It was an amazing experience and I’m so grateful I got to be part of it. I learned a lot from these little girls I was with and one of the most impactful things I was reminded of was the innate broken nature that is so central to all of us as humans. This is nothing against the children, I really grew to love them and enjoyed spending the week with them. If anything, they showed me much more of my brokenness than any of theirs. The only difference is that I try to hide the brokenness that they shamelessly display.
“Sin is a moral impurity, sin is the instincts of rebellion inside of me, and sin is inability to reach God’s standard”
During the week I watched as one girl would be unwilling to let another play with her toys, as pride would lead them to brag about a sweet they got, as tantrums unfolded when they didn't get what they wanted and selfishness rule their behavior. Alongside these moments were some really sweet gestures of sacrificing for the benefit of another girl, sharing from what was theirs and showing kindness to one another which was really heartwarming to watch. Ultimately, this led me to think about how we want to behave vs how we are taught to behave and how suppressing our primary broken nature causes us to separate ourselves from it.
“Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
We are all broken and fallen, as it says in Romans, but we are also aware of and submit to societal expectations. From the day we are born, we begin to be trained on how to behave by the adults around us. As simple as saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ is manners we are taught and not born with - unlike sin. Speaking from my own experience, I try live up to a high moral standard (that is often set by the people around me or by my expectations of myself) and when I do, I tend to try disprove the fact that I still am and always will be sinful. I don't feel so guilty about myself if I can show that my actions are not all that bad. The result of this is that I lose my humility to pride and believe that I don't need the grace of God as much as I really do.
Jesus knows that this is the way we think and addresses it by reminding us that sin takes place in our hearts - in the deepest, subconscious part of our beings. In Matthew 5 we see how Jesus elevates the Law’s instructions of ‘do not murder’ to ‘if you are angry without cause you are subject to judgement’ (Mat 5:21-23) and ‘do not commit adultery’ to ‘if you look at a woman (or man) lustfully you have already committed adultery with her in your heart” (Mat 5:27-28). I think this perfectly exposes our suppression of thoughts and desires and how we believe simply not acting on them makes us ‘less sinful’. The hard truth is we cannot escape sin. It is our very nature and we need to recognise it.
“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus”
The good news is that Jesus died on the cross to take the punishment of our sins upon Himself. Because of this we are seen as righteous before God (Rom 8:1, 10:11, 10:13). The only requirement to receive this righteousness is that we need to have faith in Jesus. When we believe in Jesus and are “found in [Him]” (Rom 8:1), He covers us with His perfection just as the passover lamb protected the Israelites in Egypt from death. God no longer sees our sin but the righteousness of His son.
When we recognise our sin and how short we fall, we get a greater revelation of how glorious Jesus is. Seeing ourselves as broken should not lead us to guilt and shame but rather to repentance* and reliance on the Lord as we come to know far and wide and high and deep the love of our God is for us.
*repentance: a complete change of heart and mind, leading to different actions (Acts 26:20) - GotQuestions
Action
Reflect on whether you have been trying to justify yourself by your actions, convincing yourself you are fine because you have been acting right. Pray that God will reveal to you where you need to humble yourself so that you would find a greater joy in the work of Jesus.
Thank you for reading this weeks newsletter and having grace with my late post. If you would like to write for The Growing Seed please feel free to contact me. We’d love for you to feature on this platform.
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I have been feeling called to post these newsletters on Thursdays instead of Saturdays so I’m going to try that out and see if it works. I hope you have a great start of the week and we’ll chat either on Thursday or Saturday again.
Lots of love, Cailyn xxx
