Day 28

“Repentance is as much a mark of a Christian, as faith is. A very little sin, as the world calls it, is a very great sin to a true Christian.”

—CHARLES SPURGEON

I didn’t want to write this. I didn’t want to open this particular window into my soul. I fought God pretty hard and faced days of scattered and shallow thoughts as I resisted his patient urging. Today, I stand on his Word and trust in His love as I obey.

A few years ago, when Mike and I were away on a holiday, my daughter, who was in her early twenties, called me and asked me the question that I had dreaded hearing from the lips of any of my children since the day I held the first one in my arms.

She asked me, bluntly, if I had saved myself for marriage, for the man whom God had for me to spend my life with.

I answered her with honest words that I can’t remember saying.

With the phone still in my hand, I lay curled up on that hotel room bed, and sobs began—sobs that came from a deep and fathomless place inside of me. To tell my strong, beautiful, pure daughter that all of the things I had taught her about purity, I hadn’t upheld in my own early life—to admit to her that I had caved, that I had abandoned the God I knew and wandered into sexual sin were the hardest words I have ever spoken.

Taking off my brightly painted mask in her presence to reveal the pale gauntness of my shame awoke a powerful grief inside of me. I didn’t know regret could take on the life it did that night—I had only let my mind dance glibly over the surface of it before. That night I had to drink that cup all the way to the bottom. For the first time in my life, I knew what it truly meant to be sorry.

We can’t say sorry to God with our masks on. We have to lay, curled up and sobbing, our masks lying on the floor beside us. It is only when we drink this cup of repentance all the way to the bottom that we find the sweetness of God’s forgiveness there. I had repented of this sin and many others before, but this time I saw, I felt, what my sin cost Jesus. Reflected in the innocence of my daughter I saw the innocence of my sinless saviour who died for me.

All my sin, dark and ugly, is what Jesus took on Himself on the cross. He took my sin because it was much too heavy for me. He bore my sin so that I could live. As I drank that bitter cup to the dregs that night, I felt what Jesus had done for me. The unutterable grief that gripped me was but an echo and a shadow of what my Savior bore for me.

I don’t know what masks you’ve been wearing. I don’t know what your regrets are. But I do know that God wants you to give him the full weight of them today. I know you’re afraid. I am very familiar with the fear that keeps us hiding behind our masks. But today is a day that calls for courage—and it isn’t a blind courage. It is the courage that knows exactly Who it is will be looking back at you when you take that mask off. There’s nothing but kindness in those eyes. When we knock, He always opens the door for us.

“Have you ever lamented, expressing your sorrow before God for the condition of your inner life? There is no thread of self-pity left, only the heart-rending difficulty and amazement which comes from seeing what kind of person you really are. ‘Humble yourselves...’ (James 4:10). It is a humbling experience to knock at God’s door— you have to knock with the crucified thief. ‘...to him who knocks it will be opened’”(Luke 11:10).

—Oswald Chambers

P R AY E R : Lord, thank you for your love for me—your love that sees behind the mask and loves me still. I give you my regrets and my shame today (be specific). Thank you for bearing the weight of my sins so that I wouldn’t have to. Thank you for loving me completely. Thank you that you have a future for me filled with hope—a future free from masks. Thank you for the “gift of repentance” that seems a bitter gift at first, but once opened, contains the keys to life and freedom.

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

—PSALM 103:8-12