Jesus Loves Dirty Roses!

Well, it's been a rather lazy Monday, which is nice...since we all know how fun Mondays are. I should have been out on a jobhunt today, but takin it easy was more enticing! I spent the better part of the morning listening to sermons online by my college minister while I was at ACU, Matt Chandler. I know that doesn't float many people's boats, but he is an incredible speaker - and his sermons aren't preachy, they're more like a conversation! Anyways - it's been awhile since I've gotten so much out of Scripture! He definitely knows how to make the word come off the page and get you off your butt when it comes to your faith!

The sermons I listened to were a three-part series on "Sex" out of Song of Solomon and Genesis 1. And while it sounds like it might be a steamy subject, it was based around the idea that the church has done a horrible job of portraying God's thoughts on the subject to the world more than any other. We have portrayed God to be a pleasure-killer. Matt makes the comment, "It's not like he created Adam and Eve, looked away for a bit, turned to find them in the midst of sex and said 'Whoa, what are you doing? NO! That is not what you're supposed to be doing!'"

Anyways, so the sermons were more of a revelation of how the church needs to present the idea of God's thoughts on sex to the world. He talks in Part 1 about a friend of his from college at HSU (also in Abilene) who, in her singleness was obviously struggling against purity in light of her young daughter and new baby. At one point she went with him and some of their friends to a concert of an old friend of his that also had a guy giving a sermon afterwards. The sermon dealt with purity. And so he used the illustration of taking a beautiful white rose, and asked the teenagers to pass it around and smell and touch it. While they were passing it around he talked about STD statistics and such. Of course at the end he asked them to pass the rose back up to him from wherever it was, and as expected it was in pretty bad shape. And the guy, in true "True Love Waits" form, asks the audience of teens who would want to take the mutilated rose home? Of course, no one volunteers, thus proving his point. Matt thought that his friend's silence on the drive back to HSU was testimony that God was convicting her. Months went by, without mention of that incident, but they remained friends and hung out and talked as normal. One night after a couple days of her being absent from class, he called her only to find her mom's voice on the other end, who explained that she was in ICU. Matt found out that she had gone to a bar, gotten drunk, gotten in the car with some guys she didn't know, and when they tried to take advantage of her she fought to the point that threw her out on the small highway while the car was moving. After some time she woke up, and she asked Matt a question he'd never expected. "Do you see me as a dirty rose?"

Matt reflected in his sermon, "Who wants the dirty rose?", in echo of the words of that young preacher years ago. After looking at the woman caught in adultery in John 8, the woman at the well in John 4, and the sinful woman who annointed Jesus' feet at the Pharisee's house in Luke 7 - of course the answer is obvious, Jesus does! But how many of us grew up hearing sermons like those Matt and his friends attended, and grew seeds of self-righteousness from it? I know I did.

God has been teaching me, revealing to me, over and over the signs of my self-righteousness. And for the first time today I could face it with peace. My response to God, "Thank you, Lord, for showing me that I'm still healing, still on the road to recovery from that path of sin." For the first time, I was not pounded with shame and guilt for my self-righteousness, but rather quietly and gently convicted - in such a way that I saw the light of hope in me that I'm moving away from it. That I still have a ways to go, but at least my eyes are opened to it, and my heart is determined to run away from that, and toward offering mercy and grace.

If that girl's story resonates with you in any way, I hope you hear me speak God's truth to you today, that He loves, collects, and restores, and displays dirty roses. And that you are not alone. We are all of us dirty roses in some way, even if not because of sexual sin. The Bible says in Romans 3:23 that we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But the exciting news comes in verse 24, that we are also justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus! I hope you experience the joy that comes from that good news today. If you don't please email me so I can share with you how God can give you peace and remove all the shame and guilt of your past mistakes! I can tell you about it only because I've experienced it. I have a history with deep scars left by the abuse and neglect of men, but also the restoration and healing of God because of Jesus!