Free Cell Damnation

Have you ever felt condemned by Free Cell? You play a few games and slowly the game tries to take over. It won't be long before you find a game difficult to win and you finally give up and move on to another game. It all seems innocent enough until you click on the stats page and see you have won 9 out of 10 games or 90%.  In most schools that is, like a B-. Even in the more generous schools where "A" goes all the way down to 90% it is an A-. The lowest "A" possible. And you will now never ever get to 100%. Win 100 more games and you are at 99%. Pretty good but not 100%. If you are like me, you will find the "undo" button. so you can get a do-over. The program on my laptop lets you undo one move at a time all the way back to the beginning to start over. And as far as I can tell you can "do-over" something like forever and the computer will never know. So you can "win" even after you know you failed. However, if you didn't know about the "undo" key and lost even one game, your stats will be forever tainted with failure. And if you are honest with yourself, the "do-overs" began with that little window telling you there are "no more legal moves" so in essence you cheated. You know. God knows.

And that is how it is in real life. If you have violated any one of God's commandments anywhere at any time you can never get 100%. You always come up short. James 2:10 tells us, "For whosoever shall keep the whole Law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all". Guilty. Condemned. And hopeless to ever fix it. No matter what I do it will never be enough. Following my decision to accept the truth about God's love through His Son, Yeshua, I was given the real story of who I was, imperfect, a blemish in God's creation. I was not just depraved but totally depraved. There was no good thing in me. Romans 3:10 - 18 told me the truth of what God really thought of me. http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Rom&c=3&t=NKJV#s=1049010

My new found freedom painted a still bleak picture of my relationship with God. I will always come up short. God knew of my attempted "do overs" and they were exposed as failures. 

Enter grace. Here I was told that, in spite of my life of absolute failure, God would be gracious if I asked Jesus to be my Savior. Just pray this prayer. Buuuut I already had understood what Jesus did. I had asked for forgiveness. I believed He was God's Son and that He died for me. But I didn't pray that "salvation" prayer. Had I missed the formula? Some magic word combination to remove the stain of who I had been and who, in some ways, I still was? I felt bad for stuff before I started to follow Christ; now theology helped me see just how totally awful I was. Not so helpful. Theology also told me God is love and that He loved me and wanted me to be with Him. But I was also reminded not to forget just how awful I really am. The more dark and ugly you see your life, the more God's grace is magnified. Now I am confused. Am I supposed to feel like deeply loved pond scum? Sin corrupts every cell of my being and, because of me, all of creation groans and convulses due to my disobedience. How comforting.

Now, this stuff may be true. But maybe we get things a bit distorted. God does love me, as I am a part of His created cosmos. "For God so loved the cosmos, that He gave His only Son" (John 3:16). My relationship with Him is not just this surreal love thing. God chooses to love me. It gives Him delight. My salvation brings Him pleasure. He made me for purpose on purpose. To be a part of His eternal purpose. I am made in His image because He wanted to make me. I have value before Him. His Grace cannot be magnified for it is all encompassing, pervading every breath of life. My sin, my failures need not be magnified to see His grace. God delights in me. I am His joy. As damaged as I was, and still am, God enjoys my presence. He gets pleasure from adopting me as His child. Therefore, I am a child of the light. So I find joy in walking in the light. I delight in Him and find pleasure in knowing I am His. I find true joy in obedience, for that just brings me closer to His presence. I am His.

Our drive to label and categorize everything in life will bring us to categorize our sin and failure. We can develop theological files of our darkness and depravity. We will misplace the Jack and there will be no more legal moves. Game over. In the process we may miss the reality of His pleasure in us. His delight in delivering us. His passion spent to make us His. Our sin lists can blind us to the real joy of obedience. Not to earn anything or to secure anything but to draw closer. That is what God's commandments are for. To draw us near, not to condemn us.

Do not let Free Cell damnation rule your life. Fear of the misplaced card. Lying about the "do-overs", categorizing your sin and failures in nice theological boxes. You would be better off to look to His grace, His delight in saving you, His pleasure in adopting you. His loving directions He gave to you so that you might know how to best live and know the joy of obedience. The Joy of His presence. Maybe its time to shuffle the deck of condemnation and find that God dealt us grace before we ever knew Him.