Sunday, September 5, 2010

What I Learned at Camp #3: I'm a Sinner

For the final installment of the "What I Learned at Camp" Series (keep in mind, this is certainly NOT everything I learned at camp, just the Big 3), I would like to focus on my reminder of how ugly my heart really is.

After my team's 2nd week of camp, we had an opportunity to do a little staff worship on the weekend, which I would say that staff worship was something the majority of the people on the team LOVED having the opportunity to do. Well this particular staff worship our staff was focusing on how far the Lord had to reach to redeem us and adopt us into His family because of the separation all of our individual sin had caused. I shared, during the beginning part of worship, Psalm 51. This is David's Psalm of lament/repentance after the whole Bathsheba fiasco. From that point forward, my prayer for myself was that God would create and continue to develop a "pure heart and...a steadfast spirit within me." I no longer wanted to have a complacent attitude toward sin, including the "small, not-that-big-of-a-deal sins". So I begged the Lord to take me to that place by His grace.

Well the Lord surely began to work in my life and bring to the forefront of my being the reality that I very much am a sinner. I very much engaged in the very things God calls me not to, whether deliberately or without recognition, and I engaged in a plethora of these things regularly...much to my chagrin. There was one incident in particular that really shook me up though, and this was a lesson that a church group leader helped teach me. I'm fairly certain her intent was not to teach me this lesson, instead just to complain about any and everything that came her way this particular week of camp. But she taught me nonetheless.

She went right after the heart of that camp pastor. How could anyone want to criticize someone who looks like that when he is preaching the Word? (shout out to my teammate Collin Spindle for taking such a horrific shot of me) But she criticized the very core of my heartbeat behind proclaiming the Gospel. What was my reaction? Well of course it was to love and forgive her and forget about it! Except...that's not at all what happened. I began to look inside my heart and realized how filthy it was. The Lord brought the fullness of how sinful my heart was to my mind in that moment. And I was rocked to the core. I was a pastor for crying out loud*! I'm not supposed to be sinful! (*NOTE: EXTREME SARCASM)

Here's what I learned: the Lord reached a long way into the pit of sin and selfishness to rescue me from the wrath that was due Tyler Crosson because of the sin in my life. Why does that matter? Well it was the full recognition that I MUST live my life in way that A)reflects the fact that the Lord has reached that far in my life for my rescue and B) reflects the fact that if the Lord is willing to reach that far for this kid, He's willing to do it for anybody else that desires to make Him the boss of their life, in light of what Jesus did on the cross. What about you? Have you allowed the Lord to rescue you? Have you recognized the depth of how far He stooped to pull YOU and ME out of the pit?

Or how about this: I do all the talking on this blog. Why don't YOU tell me something the Lord has been teaching YOU of late. You know I've got much love for you...



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