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Safe Haven for Teens is a organization that focuses at this time on providing teens with a safe place to hang before school, where they get a free breakfast and a place to talk. In the summer we will be moving into providing a afternoon place for the teens to hang where they can do art, skate board, music and hang out. |
Repent and Be Baptized!
John the Baptist’s message was simple and clear in his days in the wilderness, to all those around him: to repent and be baptized. We will not go into a history lesson on exactly what he meant by that, but the point I would like to dwell on, if I may is the concept of repentance. Is repentance something that we do only once and then we live our lives serving and loving the Lord without any sin problem? Or are we destined to live a life of struggle even while assured that whatever happens we are free and clear of any consequences? After all, we are saved under grace not under law.
The question that first must be raised needs to be simply why there is so much of a struggle with the concept of sin. It is obvious that we all struggle with it to one degree or another. We only need to venture into the Bible to the famous Apostle Paul, and as one fellow Seminary student termed it, "the do-do chapter," Romans 7: "I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate to do…." So are we all destined to lives of sin and misery, or is there any hope? CS Lewis refers to this as the law of undulation in The Screwtape Letters: "while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change. Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation – the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks." CS Lewis goes on to say that we all face peaks of emotional and bodily richness with alternate periods of numbness and poverty. So where again are we to find our hope, if we are faced with the reality of a continual struggle with sin?
The first place of hope can be found in 1 John: "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1:8,9). The other hope we have is found throughout the book of Hebrews, where it repeatedly proclaims that Christ is our perfect sacrifice and because of what He did for us we are now free to come boldly before the throne of God (Hebrews 10). The other promising truth about this is found in Hebrews 7:24,25: "But because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercedes for us." The hope we can rest assured of here is that Christ is always on the job for us, encouraging us, pleading before the Father for us. Hebrews also assures us that in His sufferings He has faced all the trials and tribulations that we face on a daily basis yet without sin.
However, the truth needs to stand that the issue of repentance and fleeing from sin is up to each and every believer. The attitude that we need not to have is one of "Well, he forgave me the last umpteen billion times, so I can do this again." Instead, we need to work diligently and hard at freeing ourselves from anything that encumbers us. "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us" (Hebrews 12:1). The best way to do this is by confessing our sins to one another, as it says in James 5:16. We need our brothers and sisters if we are to ever walk the road of victory until the day of Jesus Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his excellent book Life Together explains very thoroughly the utter importance of confessing our sins to one another. According to John 20:23, Jesus gave believers the authority to hear confessions: "If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven." Bonhoeffer goes on to say that many of us find it easier to confess our sins only to God and not to another. In so doing, "we deceive ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution. And it is not the reason perhaps of our countless relapses and the feebleness of our Christian obedience to be found precisely in the fact that we are living on self-forgiveness and not a real forgiveness? Self-forgiveness can never lead to a breach with sin; this can be accomplished only by the judging and pardoning Word of God itself…. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person. As long as I am by myself in the confession of my sins everything remains in the dark, but in the presence of a brother the sin has to be brought into the light."
I have found this true for myself. I have continued for many years to struggle with a sexual addiction. I have at one time found real healing and freedom in this area. However, in the last several months, I have found myself caught in the grips of this insanity of perpetual sin. I have finally found freedom and release from this insanity only by going to my brothers and sisters around me and asking them to hold me accountable. It has also meant returning to them and receiving their love and forgiveness each time I have had another fall. I would like to proclaim a new freedom and victory in this area, and it is only because I have learned the utter importance of confession and repentance.
I would like to return to CS Lewis and the law of undulation for a moment because he draws a wonderful conclusion concerning our plight in our daily walk with the Lord. The Screwtape Letters is a factious conversation between Wormwood, a senior tempter and Screwtape, the junior tempter, in which Wormwood is discussing how to win his patient from the Enemy (God). "You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons, which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence, which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws if not in fact, at least from their conscience experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs – to carry out from the will alone duties, which have lost all relish…. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even in their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."
In closing, I encourage all of us to learn how to go to our brothers and sisters and confess our sins. It may be the most difficult and demanding thing that you have ever attempted to do outside of your original confession. However, you will find no greater freedom or reward than to find yourself finally free from a perpetual cycle of sin.
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