we now join our friend's prayer, already in progress

Folks who read this blog also read a passionate prayer for conversion

Last year, I had a profound moment when I was talking to someone about something very personal to me and about which I am very passionate. This person had said something that made it obvious that the full extent of what I was saying was not understood – that it was still be filtered through preconceived notions and motivations that had never been evaluated. I made what I thought was a sneaky, but obvious, remark about our need to explore our shallow understanding. My conversation partner agreed that a lot of our students needed to think along those lines. It seems that our greatest enemy of hearing what we need to hear is the notion that it is being said for someone else’s benefit.
I’m reminded of Nathan confronting David with the story of David’s own sin. The king was appalled at hearing of this atrocity, but didn’t realize that he was the perpetrator. A few years ago, Bruce Waltke was our Staley Lecture series speaker. He was doing a series on Proverbs. I was convicted to my core for three days of sermons. Each day people left the building discussing shallow issues of presentation, etc. never hearing the magnitude of what God is asking of us. I felt convicted about things that never even came across my radar screen. I feel convicted now about a judgemental attitude towards my friends and colleagues three years ago.
I remember reading about an incident in the house of a man named Simon. Simon was asked who would be more grateful, one who’d been forgiven much or who’d been forgiven little. Sounds like Jesus was complementing Simon on having had so little to be forgiven as opposed to the sinful woman. But I’d imagine that Jesus was trying to make him understand just how incredibly sinful he was. What he thought were little things cost the same price as the sins of the prostitute. Furthermore, what he thought were little things were not small at all. It was this realization that Waltke showed me.
What kind of sins have you had forgiven? Adultery? Promiscuity? Drug addiction? Alcoholism? Theft? Lies? Racism? Plagiarism? Short-changing a customer? Undeclared taxable income? Profiting by causing someone else loss? Cutting someone off in traffic? Gossip? Walking on by while Jesus huddles cold and hungry in smelly, torn clothes on the corner?
It is my pride that keeps me from recognizing sin as sin. It is pride, itself a sin, that causes sin to go unconfessed because I am unwilling to examine myself and see my filthiness. It is pride that allows me to examine myself with the instrument of comparison, rather than allowing God to show me how I rate on his scale.
It is pride that will allow us to watch “The Passion of The Christ”, and pray that it will impact our friends. I pray that every little ongoing, selfish, sinful attitude and self-serving behavior in my life will be exposed to me in the depicted suffering of the Messiah and that I will be reminded that the same act that is revealing it to me provides for it to be forgiven.