“To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark.” BRENNAN MANNING
With two weeks to go in this Ragamuffin Series of devotionals, I thought it might be helpful to remind you of WHY I’ve been writing week after week (eight weeks to be exact) on the gospel of grace for Ragamuffins like me.
I HAVE A DARK SIDE.
I think things that I’d rather not.
I say things that I wish I didn’t.
I do things that, well, I wish I didn’t.
My dark side, well, it can be pretty dark.
You have a dark side as well… we all do.
SIN.
FLESH.
These two words that are interchangeable for our ‘dark side.’ The Bible often uses the metaphor of darkness for all things sin, flesh, and evil.
One of the more perplexing things to me when I started walking with God was the continued pull towards my dark side. I just assumed that when God rescued me from the ‘dominion of darkness’ (Colossians 1:13) that my desires towards sin/flesh/darkness would disappear.
Well, 40+ years into a walk with God and I still have a dark side… a pull towards my fleshy nature.
As way of example, just yesterday, I cut someone off while driving. To be clear, I did not know I cut them off, but he kindly pulled up next to me, gave me a certain finger and yelled out his window what he thought of me… and let’s just say it would seem he did not like me all that much.
Now, to be honest, I was a bit confused because I had no idea what I had done to him to garner such a reaction, but when he did what he did, everything in me wanted to follow him to let him know what I now thought of him. What’s up with that?
I have a dark side. I do and say and think things that are just fleshy and sinful. 40+ years into walking with God and sin still rears its ugly head in my life more than I’d care to admit.
For years and years, I made a massive assumption that when my dark side (sin & flesh) showed up (which felt like all the time) that God was in heaven shaking His Holy head in disappointment. And because I assumed that to be true of God, I assumed that I had to do all sorts of ‘good things’ in order to get Him to stop being disappointed in me.
It took me a long time to stop living like this… like decades. Thankfully, I no longer see God as a disappointed Father, rather when sin shows up in my life, I see the face of a Father who smiles upon His son.
To be clear, God does not smile on sin, but to be equally clear, when God sees me… when God sees you, He does not see ANY SIN because GOD ONLY SEES HIS SON.
This is the beauty of the GOSPEL OF GRACE.
GOD’S GRACE IS NOT JUST PARDON.
GOD’S GRACE IS POWER.
When flesh wants to have a field day in your head and heart, join me in giving thanks to God for His grace… a grace that pardons and a grace that empowers us to say “NOT TODAY” darkness.
