DAILY BYTE
It is high time for some Good News. For just as temptation and evil feature through-out the Bible, so matching them step for step, word for word, and all the while swapping lies for truth is the promise of redemption. Rescue! Deliverance!
For every mistake made in the Garden of Eden, there is God coming to find a hiding Adam and Eve. For every lost Israelite trapped under the power of Egypt, there is a loving God hearing their cries and bringing to them a journey of Exodus - of deliverance.
There are two errors we commonly make in reaction to God’s promise of deliverance – they can be summarised as pride and paranoia.
Pride is when we refuse to accept our need for a Saviour. Pride is when we see it as weakness and not strength to face up to our helplessness. We have no problems in seeing sin or evil in others. That’s easy enough to do, but we hide our own needs behind self-deceit, bluster, masks and games of pretend.
Most of the western first world struggles with this and even some versions of Christianity are formed around it when they become nothing but teachings of self-discovery, self-help, and self-realisation. Programs of personal enrichment are developed that actually turn us away from true engagement with God, ourselves and others.
In the Bible, you only discover ‘who you really are’ when the living God, your creator, is rescuing you and giving you a new identity, a new status and a new name; all the while turning your attention firmly onto greater things – onto a life of worshipping someone beyond yourself, and onto a life of loving and giving and serving.
Paranoia is different to pride, but is just as damaging in its own way. Paranoia is when we become so paralysed by temptation or evil that we are never able to move out into the wide open spaces of God’s mercy. It is when either guilt or fear freezes us in our tracks.
We forget that the first word we are taught to say in the Lord’s Prayer is not ‘sorry,’ that comes later, but rather ‘Father’. In fact, even the Prodigal son began his little speech in the same way ... ‘Father’.
We have a tendency to allow our struggles with various temptations and sins to define us. They end up naming us, and we live in their shadow. I am a drunk. A gossiper. An adulterer. A racist. A porn addict. A road rage driver. Or when we become paralysed by evil, we become defined by a new label – victim – and so we live forever angry and bitter and fearful.
These labels neither rescue nor deliver us, but rather imprison us in another way. No! You are a child of God! That’s what should define you, that’s your deepest identity. That’s how you should see yourself, and that’s what you should live by. Grace and not shame.
For our prayers begin with the word ‘Father.’
PRAY AS YOU GO
O Gracious Deliverer, thank you for your saving and loving redemption. Thank you that you have created us to be defined by our relationship with you, and not by our mistakes, sins and fears. Thank you that we are your children – deeply and compassionately loved – help us to live by that identity and none other. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Psalm 18. 1-6 NIV
I love you, O LORD, my strength.
The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.
He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise,
and I am saved from my enemies.
The cords of death entangled me;
the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
The cords of the grave coiled around me;
the snares of death confronted me.
In my distress I called to the LORD;
I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my cry came before him, into his ears.
