The Cross- Part 3

You didn't want Heaven without us
So, Jesus You brought Heaven down
My sin was great Your love was greater
What could separate us now?

“What a Beautiful Name,” Hillsong Worship

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Reconciliation is one of my favorite words because it’s fun to say and it has so many syllables.

Also, I love what it means: to be brought back into relationship after being estranged.

When I was very young, my parents separated. My father moved out. Shortly afterward, my mom moved a friend and her three young children into our home. The friend was going through a separation as well and the two of them relied on one another for support.

Mom took a job outside of the home for the first time that I could remember. The roommate was understandably deeply depressed, and therefore slept most of the time. At the age of 7, I became the caretaker of the three young children plus my 4-year old brother.

That stretch of time is indelibly marked in my memory in spite of my very young age at the time.  It lasted about a year. Then one morning, before school, my mom sat down at the breakfast table with me and my brother. She informed us that our roommates would soon be moving out and Dad would be coming back home to live with us.

I had cried a lot that year – in confusion, sadness and frustration. The tears came again in that very moment. But I was overjoyed. That was my first experience with reconciliation. Even at a young age, what stood out to me was that it didn’t “just happen.” There had to be an active party who reached out to bridge that gap. My dad decided that enough was enough and that he didn’t want to live apart from my mom.

Over a decade later, I would experience reconciliation in a very different way.

Shortly after my parents reconciled, my family began attending church. The years went by and I was the Sunday School Superstar. I obeyed the rules. I memorized the verses. I attended all the church services. However, my faith never truly became my own.

By my senior year in high school, I was very far from the Lord. Estranged, I spent my college years in a very dark place.

As my junior year of college began to wind down and the autumn leaves began to fall, I was involved in a car accident. That wreck got my attention. I began to evaluate where my life was headed, the poor decisions I had spent the past several years making, and what I wanted my future to look like.

That following Wednesday – November 12^th, 1997 – I decided to set foot into church again for the first time in who-knows-how-long.

My brother had left early to attend worship practice. My parents weren’t home. It was just me and my “trusty” 1994 Dodge Neon. Of course, the car wouldn’t start. So much for my plans of going to church that night!

Then the phone rang. 

It was my brother’s best friend, Ronnie.

“Jason already left for church,” I told him.

“I know,” he replied. “I’m calling for you. Do you need a ride to church? I feel like God wants me to drive you tonight.”

Whoa.

He picked me up. We drove to church.

Jesus changed my life that night. I was estranged and He actively sought me out in order that I might be reconciled. He was the active party that reached out to bridge the gap. (And I thank God daily for Ronnie’s obedience and part in my story).

Is Jesus reaching out to bridge the gap in your life today? Is there someone in your life that God is prompting you to help bridge the gap?

It is my prayer today that we would never forget our own moments of reconciliation, and that we would listen to the voice of the Lord as He prompts us to be part of His plan of reconciliation to those around us. 

Written by: Jaime Hlavin

The Cross- Part 1

More than ten years ago, I was channel surfing late at night and came across a reality TV show where, for reasons I don’t recall, a young Christian man from some rural Bible Belt community was sent to live and work for a while among a group of young gay men in a trendy coastal neighborhood. It was supposed to unfold like an Odd Couple style pairing, I think, though the Christian and his new compatriots were mostly agreeable and found their lives had more commonalities than differences.

Of course, people who get along don’t make very riveting television. So at some point the group staged a dinner table talk over the Christian’s homespun values and his views on sin. He had tried, in a ham-handed way, to explain that his church viewed all sin the same way and that certain kinds of sex were no different than murder. He could as easily have said “no different than lying” or “no different than pounding your thumb with a hammer and shouting the Lord’s name in vain.” Once the group heard their sexual expression equated with murder, tempers flared and civil discourse mostly shut down. The next several minutes of the program were a mix of venting and cringe-worthy apologies. Around then I remembered I was a grown-up with better things to do, and shut off the TV for the night.

What remained with me, though, was a sense that our group values often align by which issues we face personally and which issues we don’t. It’s probably easy to get a large group of evangelicals all on the same page about robbery, violence, or a kind of sexuality no one in the parish deals with personally (or discusses publicly if they do). The sins of others, as it were. It might be tougher to get everyone in a congregation to unite against gluttony, online pornography, or prescription drug abuse – the struggles that tend to get more representation in our own church pews. And yet, as the reality TV star tried to explain, all sins hold a common value. Ultimately, they all separate us from God.

Even in New Testament times, we heard this week, it was easy for believers to lose sight of the enormous redemptive power of the cross. We can try to devalue or justify our own sin, but grace does something entirely different. Grace doesn’t diminish or erase our debt. Rather, it pays our debt in full. 

 “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us,” (Ephesians 1:7-8 NIV).  

In Ephesus, a city characterized by slave trade, redemption could carry the commercial connotation of being bought out of servitude. But understanding the value of redemption also requires having sober attention to what sins and struggles hold sway over us. We can’t practice forgiveness, be gracious ourselves, or learn to cope with the flaws of others if we don’t believe ourselves to be flawed.

The good news, though, is the reverse is also true. You will be amazed at how much transformative love and healing you can bring into the lives of others when you realize what Jesus’ own grace has done for you.

The magnitude of that realization will almost start poring out through your skin. Despite the times I have failed to witness to those around me, I have often found that people have known where I stood for years in my faith just by observing my general demeanor. I like to think that’s the power of walking through life feeling forgiven.

If you find yourself becoming cynical or lackadaisical in your approach to Christianity, I challenge you to be reminded of the grace that saved you. Although we did not deserve it and were all guilty of sin, Christ redeemed us and set us free.

Written by: Chad Halcom

Edited by: Tamara Sturdivant