God of Second Chances

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from People of the Second Chance

Here I am, spending seven days at home before I'm off to my next adventure: 10 weeks at summer camp in Alabama. And I'm excited for it, albeit a bit terrified. I have hope it will go well and I will learn a lot.

In the meantime, I've been getting up to date on the blogs I follow, and I came across a post referencing the "Purity Culture," that is, something along the lines of True Love Waits with a heavy emphasis on the sanctity of the marriage bed and chastity before marriage. The post (you can read it here) is not only expressing concern over the Purity Culture for keeping men and women from a healthy expression of their sexuality (it's bad and wrong until you get married, but then it's 100% perfect and encouraged), but is also offering up the hope of second chances. Jonalyn argues that much of the Christian community has an inadequate understanding of God's gift of sexuality. I would agree with her. 

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Let's explore that idea of second chances, because I don't yet have an answer for the "problem" of the Purity Culture. My pastor and his wife will have been married for ten years this summer. She was not a virgin when they got married and she told me once told me how heartbreaking it felt that she couldn't give her husband everything. I guess it was the realization that someone else had also known her intimately.

Yet her husband, my pastor, is truly in love with her. He does not see her as damaged goods. He sees her as beautiful. When they first met, he had hope for her. When I look at her now, I see a life changed. She left behind a girl of addictions to become a woman of faith. She shared her story with us on Mother's Day this year and I was reminded that God is a God of second chances.

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The summer after I graduated high school, my oldest first cousin got married at a lovely ceremony I had the privilege of attending. He and his wife moved up north after the wedding and were together for less than a year before separating and subsequently divorcing. When I heard of their divorce, I wrote a painful and probably much-too-harsh post (that I happen to have located) detailing my frustration. I had high hopes for this couple and I felt broken when I learned that my hopes that this marriage would be the one out of our family to last were dashed.

It's been three years this month after that wedding, and I am proud to say that I saw a tweet slide up on my Twitter feed that indicated that my former cousin-in-law is happily remarried to a fellow believer. There was a spark of happiness in my heart when I saw that. What a God of second chances!

Even though this young woman is no longer a part of my family, she is still a member of the body of Christ, and God provided her with the gift of second chances that he willingly provides each of his children.

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As I write this, my great-great uncle is lying on his deathbed. After almost ninety-one years on this earth, he spent his life well and is nearing the end of his time with us. As the story goes, he was in the Navy back in the day and was taken by helicopter off of his ship and out of the war zone for some reason. While he was gone, his ship was attacked and lost, and none of his friends and shipmates survived. The helicopter could not locate the attacked ship, and my uncle's shipmates were gone.

The story has been told to me multiple times, and it always ends with my uncle's feelings of guilt for leaving his crew behind and being the only one who survived. He never talks about it. But yesterday, as I sat beside his bed and stared up at his plaques and photos lining the wall, I came to the conclusion that God gave my great-great uncle a second chance. After leaving the Navy, he went to college and seminary, became a Methodist preacher, got married, and had two sons. He also helped raise my grandmother and her sister, who never knew their father. He wrote and published a little book and was able to move back to the area where he grew up. He and his current wife are presently living in the home where she was raised.

And God gave him another chance. I think the reason God gives us second chances (and third, and fourth...) is because he has something better for us. God doesn't want the mistakes men and women made in their pasts to mar their futures beyond repair. God didn't want my great-great uncle to die that day when he was in the Navy. I believe that God has great plans for his children, and if that means structuring events and circumstances to provide them with another chance to choose good, even another chance to choose him, I believe he will do just that. God is in the restoring business, and that includes second chances.

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Speaking of second chances... I am preparing to move my blogging-self over to http://deannalexis.wordpress.com/, to a blog tentatively titled "Grace Upon Grace." I would love to have your insight into the next stages of my blogging career. If you are able, please take this quick survey and answer how best you can. I appreciate it greatly!

Need that survey link? Click here. Thank you so much!

Already Forgiven

My college's prayer team has spent days and weeks participating in 24/7 prayer for a number of years, and next week is our big Spring 2013 week of nonstop prayer. 24/7 Prayer is an "international, interdenominational Christian movement praying and working for reconciliation" spiritually, socially, and environmentally.

A couple years ago, while I was spending an hour in our prayer room on campus with a group of people for a 24/7 prayer week, I got the strong sense that God was speaking to me. This was before the really powerful sense of God's voice I felt when my vision clouded over and my heart beat faster, like when I was called to Asia, even though I haven't had that same experience in a while. Anyway, I felt as if God was saying, "I've already forgiven you." At the time, I had not been to counseling or expressed my need for confession or accountability yet. I didn't understand. It was almost like I could not quite process what God was saying to me, like I wasn't ready for it.

I'm not sure if I felt like I was being "super-righteous" or what, but I opened my eyes and looked for someone to whom I could tell what God had told me. I figured that since I didn't quite understand what he meant in reference to my own life, he must have meant it for someone else. I stood up and walked across the room to a girl I barely knew, who I'll call T, and I told her, "God has already forgiven you." She smiled at me, I smiled back, and I returned to my seat.

The funny thing is, she no longer attends my college, but I recently became acquainted with her blog. She is working with the International House of Prayer in the area where I used to live, and I am reading such encouraging and spiritually-motivating thoughts on her blog. A tiny part of me is like: Who am I to think I'm all high and mighty for God Himself to give me a message for this girl who is obviously closer to Him than I am?

I chastised myself for that thought, because why would I think that? Maybe she really did need to hear what God had told me. On the other hand, for several weeks after that night, I have questioned why I so distinctly felt God telling me "I've already forgiven you" if there was no point to it. Eventually, I gave up my concern for the circumstance and let it pass. Now, years later, it struck me tonight that perhaps that word from God was for me.

I have been out of counseling for over three months now, and I do not have all my problems solved. However, I am at a much healthier place in my life. I have learned positive coping mechanisms and successful thought processes. I have seen God in an entirely new light. And now even when the emotional roller coaster of that changing process is pretty much over, and it's tempting to get down on myself again, God continues to reveal little things to me. Like this thought tonight that maybe that word was for me: to prepare me for dealing with my crap and to prepare me for the time of learning after dealing with it.

His Words to me are:

I have already forgiven you. And I will keep forgiving you.

This is about more than the "sin that so easily entangles" that we all deal with everyday. This is about the deep tragedies of life from when we were younger, the sins we committed and the sins committed against us. This is about the sense of failing that grinds into our shoulders and backs and hearts and keeps us from standing up straight or letting our real faces show to the world.

Our God is not a God of anger. He is a God who speaks.

I have been praying for God to speak to me again, and I have been asking for more of Him since very early this month. I'm sad to say I have not been asking him consistently for these big things, but mostly I have been asking him for little things, like to "please let this computer open my document now so I won't be late to class." I know, those are ridiculous things. People write sermons on how we shouldn't treat God like a vending machine when they hear prayers like that.

Fortunately, those "little" prayers are teaching me something, too. A relationship with God is built not only on big things, but also on little things. Similarly, my relationship with my roommate L is built on "big" things, like finding time to Skype over Christmas or summer break or buying each other nice things for our birthdays. But it is also built on little things, like when I save her the chocolate piece at the end of a nutty ice cream cone. She loves the little chocolate piece. It's something small and meaningful, as crazy as that sounds.

A relationship with God should not be lived on Sunday mornings and during revival weeks. It should be lived in the day to day, and my seemingly petty prayers only serve to remind me to keep a conversation with God at the forefront. They remind me to ask God what he would have me do instead of constantly asking him to do things for me. He is so good and so patient and so graceful with an already-but-not-yet-resurrected-fallen-woman like me.

Oh, and by the way, the document opened before I had even finished my prayer. Even in the little things, God reminds me that he will always pursue me. He will always speak to me. He will always forgive me.

We are already forgiven.

Peace From the Heart of God

It's Tuesday of Spring Break week and I'm sitting on a screened-in porch in central Florida. The birds woke me up this morning a little before nine, and I had a breakfast of cereal and a clementine before reading the morning away. The sunshine is warm and the breeze is cool. When I walk down the tile and hardwood hallway, my feet make "plick-plick" sounds, like a museum. Yesterday, we saw manatees and a natural spring, and today we're going shopping before dinner with M's grandmother.

There is nothing like a peaceful place to set your heart back in line.

I have friends at college who are heavily into philosophy, apologetics, and psychiatry. Several weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend who changed her major from education to philosophy, and, although she never said it aloud, I found a beautiful reminder in her major-change: studying philosophy seemed to lead her closer to the heart of God.

See, God is a God of truth. Many even say that "all truth is God's truth." If this is true, then philosophy (which is basically logic, ethics, and wisdom), would lead its follower deeper into the God of all logic, ethics, and wisdom. That is why the world does not deny Christ, but proves him.
(I hope my philosophy friends can share their thoughts on this!)

When I found myself in this beautiful setting for spring break, in which the mornings are for reading, the afternoons are for fun, and the evenings are for fellowship, I wondered if perhaps this peaceful setting could and would lead me closer to the heart of God: the heart of a God who is peaceful and welcoming.

Psalm 118, the Bible reading for the Lenten devotionals I get each morning, made reference to the goodness of God. My phone call last night with my roommate reminded me of God's goodness and grace, provision and hope, and then today, reminded again of the peace here, I sought out one of my favorite passages: John chapter 14.

John writes, "I am leaving you with a gift--peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don't be troubled or afraid." (John 14:27)

Even though the peace of this week will fade away when I return to the busyness of next week's school assignments, I am reminded that God's peace, the kind this world cannot give, will not fade away. He is the rock I can cling to during this storms of this life.