Another year over and most of us are talking about the year ahead. But what about the year behind? What about the last 10, 20 or 30 years behind? What’s hiding back there?
Imagine for a moment that the sum total of your life’s experiences are down there in the shed labelled and in boxes, ready to be brought out for inspection upon your death.
Any happy memories in there? We know what to do with those, don’t we? They are the stuff of slide shows for family get-togethers.
What about some of the other stuff, over there in that corner with a tarp draped over the top of it. What’s under there? Unfaithfulness that destroyed an important relationship? A bunch of stuff you stole throughout the year? The lies you told those you loved, along with the hidden shame? Anger, hate, envy?
What about the stuff you’ve got hidden right at the back there? The stuff that nobody even knows about?
How do you feel about all that stuff, slowly accumulating and following you about for another year?
It seems that the older we get, the more that mountain of stuff grows, and the more it grows, the heavier it gets and the harder it is to escape its menacing shadow.
This can be true of Christians who drift from the grace that saves them, as well as those who do not yet know God. unconfessed, unrepentant sin weighs the soul down.
What will you do?
Sure, there’s the psychiatrist, the pilsner, the pills, the porn and the poker machines. Like all man-made religion, these provide a brief hope of forgetting. But the mountain remains and its shadow only lengthens, and we know this by painful experience every time we put our head on the pillow.
Maybe sleep will help. Maybe when I wake up in the morning everything will be brand new?
There is a ‘waking from the dead’ that does make things new. It is the gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is not a thing to be believed once and then forgotten. It is what sets us free and then keeps us free each day.
It’s the only thing in human history that has ever promised–and followed through on the promise–to remove the mountain of guilt. And with that gospel comes the promise from Jesus that whoever comes to Him, He will in no way cast out.
So come to Him again today. Make this the year you bring all that junk to Him and leave it at the foot of the cross. Let each day this year draw you nearer to Jesus; who covers your shame and calls you to walk with Him in reverential fear and friendship.
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