Episode Transcript
Welcome Bonnie McClure to the Wake-Up Call as she continues the mini-series on Psalm 103. Bonnie is from Bremen, Georgia. She is married to Matthew, and mother of two sons ten and eight, and a dog named Kudzu and a cat named Rose. She’s a high school bookkeeper by day and a writer by calling. She writes regularly at the Pointed Arrow.
PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Abba, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Abba, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Psalm 103 (NLT)
Let all that I am praise the LORD;
with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name.
Let all that I am praise the LORD;
may I never forget the good things he does for me.
He forgives all my sins
and heals all my diseases.
He redeems me from death
and crowns me with love and tender mercies.
He fills my life with good things.
My youth is renewed like the eagle’s!
The LORD gives righteousness
and justice to all who are treated unfairly.
He revealed his character to Moses
and his deeds to the people of Israel.
The LORD is compassionate and merciful,
slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.
He will not constantly accuse us,
nor remain angry forever.
He does not punish us for all our sins;
he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.
For his unfailing love toward those who fear him
is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.
He has removed our sins as far from us
as the east is from the west.
The LORD is like a father to his children,
tender and compassionate to those who fear him.
For he knows how weak we are;
he remembers we are only dust.
Our days on earth are like grass;
like wildflowers, we bloom and die.
The wind blows, and we are gone—
as though we had never been here.
But the love of the LORD remains forever
with those who fear him.
His salvation extends to the children’s children
of those who are faithful to his covenant,
of those who obey his commandments!
The LORD has made the heavens his throne;
from there he rules over everything.
Praise the LORD, you angels,
you mighty ones who carry out his plans,
listening for each of his commands.
Yes, praise the LORD, you armies of angels
who serve him and do his will!
Praise the LORD, everything he has created,
everything in all his kingdom.
Let all that I am praise the LORD.
CONSIDER THIS
How far east can you go before you begin heading west?
It sounds a little like a riddle and the psalmist means it as such. “He has removed our sin as far from us as the east is from the west.” Trying to locate the limit of God’s removal of our sins, would be like trying to locate the west by heading east—it can never be found.
God’s forgiveness is so abounding, that it creates a container that encapsulates the trajectory of our entire lifetime. From God’s perspective, he has already solved sin. Sin is not a problem for him. It is a problem for us. But our sin problem is more than just a legalistic moral function. Because of God’s ultimate sovereignty, as forgiven believers, we no longer fear the consequences of our sin, instead, we can allow it to be an indicator of how well we know (or don’t know) Christ.
Consider the story of Peter’s denial of Christ. This story is often told as a gut-wrenching example of the human willingness to choose self (sin) over Christ. But there is something else for us to see here as well.
Jesus predicts Peter will deny him three times. He makes this prediction even in the face of Peter’s declaration that he would die for Jesus: “Peter asked, ‘Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you” (John 13:37 NIV).
Jesus sees Peter’s eagerness to prove his love for him, but he also must see something else, for when push comes to shove, Peter indeed denies knowing Jesus. We often conceive of Peter’s sin in the betrayal, in the denying, in the lie.
But even though Peter lied in the sense that he did know, on some personal level, who Jesus was, the fact that he was willing to betray Jesus after all he knew, demonstrates that for Peter to say he did not know Jesus was also, in a way, true.
For if Peter was willing to deny the Lord, Jesus Christ, the one true King and eternal Savior of the world, this is a clear indicator that he doesn’t actually intimately know Jesus as well as he believes he does. If he did, he would not have denied him.
Our own beloved J. D. Walt shared a similar sentiment. If you’ve followed the Wake-Up Call long enough to remember it as the Daily Text, in one entry there, J. D. wrote, “If the unmerited love of God is not enough, it is a sign that we do not yet know the unmerited love of God.”
In Peter’s case, if the presence and power of Jesus was not enough for him to risk his life by admitting he knows him, it is a sign that Peter does not yet know the true presence and power of Jesus.
Jesus doesn’t need a checklist of things we’ve done right in order to prove we know him. He doesn’t need eagerness and stubbornness to nobly die for him as a martyr, no, instead, what Jesus desires is the inner surrender to transformation, the signal of which can only be identified by genuine demonstrations of his love in our lives.
As Jesus later tells him, “Then feed my sheep” (John 21:17 NLT).
If I may expound, Jesus might be saying to us, “I don’t need you to die for me, I need you to feed my sheep. One is a magnanimous sacrifice that you’re not really ready to make anyway, and one is a humble outpouring of service, an act that demonstrates true understanding of who I am.”
How many times in our lives have we felt ready to abandon all fears and doubts, and give up everything to follow Jesus, only to be confronted with a startling reality that causes us to shrink away or cling to worldly safety?
Because Jesus has solved sin for us, removing our transgressions as far as the east is from the west, instead of burying ourselves under guilt and shame for our sin, I wonder if we could just let our sin show us where we are weak in our faith? What if we let our sin be an indicator of where we thought we knew God, but yet the actions of our behavior reveal where we continue to deny him?
From this viewpoint, we would have a clearer view, then, of where God wants to redeem and repair. We would know the places we must ask for his forgiveness to touch and for his sovereignty to reign. For if Jesus is not Lord of all domains of our lives, then we have actually made him Lord of none.
THE PRAYER
Lord, thank you that you do not settle for how well we think we know you but instead, you pursue us into understanding who you really, truly are, and that upon beginning to grasp this, we naturally respond with gratitude and service in your name and for your glory. We thank you that this pursuit is lifelong, that you never give up on our relationship, and that you never allow us to remain in complacency. We thank you for sending your Son Jesus to solve the sin problem for once and for all. Reveal to us the areas where we need to know you better, Lord. Send your spirit to help us take an honest assessment.
