DAILY DEVOTIONAL – March 30, 2020
“Good Traction“
Prayer: Lord Jesus, it is for freedom You have set us free. Lord strengthen our faith and trust in You so that we cast of the shackles of guilt and shame and joyfully run to You in repentance each and every day, knowing You are faithful to forgive us. Amen.
Scripture: Psalm 139:1-12
O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
Devotional – “Good Traction”
There is a common legend that is told about a police officer that ran 50mph in order to catch a drunk driver. The story has been told for decades and has taken on a wide variety of adaptations. As with most all legends, the story is based on a related historical event but has been enriched with fanciful features to emphasize a lesson behind the event. The story about the police officer that ran 50mph in order to catch a drunk driver may not be entirely true, but as any good legend does, there is a good lesson to be learned from it.
One variation of the story goes like this:
About 3:00 am one very cold morning, a highway State Trooper responded to a call about a car that was off the shoulder of the road in the middle of a fierce winter storm. He located the car and found that it was stuck deep in the snow but with the engine still running.
Pulling in behind the car with his emergency lights on, the trooper walked to the driver’s door to find an older man passed out behind the wheel with a nearly empty vodka bottle on the seat beside him. The driver woke up when the trooper tapped on the window. Seeing the rotating lights in his rearview mirror and the state trooper standing next to his car, the man panicked. Still inebriated and not thinking straight, the startled driver jerked the gearshift into “drive” and hit the gas.
The car’s speedometer was showing 20, 30, 40, and then 50 MPH, but it was still stuck in the snow, wheels spinning. The trooper having a sense of humor began running in place next to the speeding, but stationary car. The drunk driver looked out of his window and was only thrown further into panic thinking that the trooper was actually keeping up with him on foot. This went on for another 30 seconds before the trooper pointed a firm finger at the driver and yelled, “PULL OVER!” The man obliged and nodded, signaled a lane change, slowed down and pulled over again to the side of the road and stopped the engine…all while the car remained stationary with its wheels spinning in the deep snow. Needless to say, the driver was arrested and is probably still shaking his head over the state trooper who could run 50 miles per hour.
This man’s alcohol consumption had caused him not only to make the initial mistake of getting into the car and driving, but it caused him to further compound his problems by attempting to outrun the cops and get away. Trying to escape made this drunk driver look even more foolish than he did already and made his situation exponentially worse.
You know friends, when we try to hide our sins against God or when we run from God thinking that maybe we can get away with something we know we shouldn’t do, we also only compound our problems. Whether we are inebriated by pride or shame, it’s never a good idea to try and deal with our sin by attempting to hide or cover it up or run away from it or pretend it never happened. There is nothing God does not see. Deceiving ourselves into thinking that there is any sin no matter how big or small that God does not see or that we can hide or get away with is as foolish as the drunk driver’s attempt to escape with his wheel buried in snow. Even if we were to somehow gain traction and actual run away, God is everywhere all the time; we are only always moving toward Him, not away from Him. As it says in Psalm 139,
“2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?”
David who wrote Psalm 139 knew all too well the foolishness of trying to hide and run from God, and how doing so not only further compounds our problems and shame but also results in hurting those around us even more than we already have. After committing adultery with the Bathsheba, the wife of his best friend Uriah who served David faithfully, instead of confessing his sin to Uriah and pleading for mercy and forgiveness from God David thought he was clever enough to cover-up his sin. Apparently, David thought that if he could get away with it before the eyes of men, then God would also be none the wiser. Not only was David wrong, but the guilt and shame of his un-repented sin drove him to murder his best friend when he realized that it couldn’t be covered-up.
Not too different from being drunk, a guilty conscience can make a person do some crazy things they normally wouldn’t do. We only make life increasingly miserable for ourselves and hurt others when we fail or refuse to repent, and the truth is friends, there is absolutely no reason we have to not want to repent and actually look forward to repenting of our sins every moment of everyday!
The Good News of the Gospel is that we have already been forgiven of all of our sins through the blood Christ shed for you and I on the cross. We do not repent in order to convince God to forgive us or solicit His mercy, we already have His love and mercy and forgiveness given to us in full, in Christ Jesus who rose from the dead. We repent because we still sin every day and because we have the faithful promise of God in Lamentations 3:22-23 that says, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is His faithfulness.” Unrepented sin blinds us from seeing the hope and light of the salvation that Christ died to give us. Unrepented sin blinds those we sin against from seeing that hope and light of Christ shine through us. Unrepented sin deprives our soul of the security and assurance of God’s love that it needs in order to rest in the peace of God in Christ.
As the Apostle John says in 1 John 1:6-9, “6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
It is for freedom that Christ set us free. A life of joyful repentance not only frees our soul, but it frees our relationships with others. Although I am by no means perfect at doing this and readily admit that my sinful nature and pride make it hard to do, I have come to learn as you may have, that walking in the light and not hiding my failures and sins both keeps me closer to God and keeps me closer to others as well. We tend to think that confessing or admitting fault will make others look down on us, when in fact, the opposite is most often the case. Repenting of our sins against others can not only rapidly diffuse a difficult and tense situation but will also confirm rather than call in to question a good character and a good reputation. Everyone sins. God is the only judge and opinion we should concern ourselves with.
Martin Luther’s 95 theses were what sparked the flame of the Reformation and restored the Good News and the joy of the Gospel in Jesus Christ. Do you know what the very 1st of Martin Luther’s theses was? The 1st thesis says:
“When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said “Repent,” he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.”
My friends, the Christian life is one of freedom and joy in the free salvation of God in Christ, because the Christian life is one of repentance, of trust in Christ’s sufficiency and not our own and of turning from sin and toward our Lord Jesus who saves sinners.
Repent and receive the Kingdom of Heaven my friends, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
