Convicted

When we returned to Kyiv from Kharkov, 6 of us had a few days to rejuvenate before the second team arrived for camp 2.  Matt suggested we read through a book of the Bible and discuss it together, so we met in the guys’ apartment and had a Ukrainian feast- bread, sausage, cheese, cherry juice, and a loaf of ice cream (yes, ice cream comes in loaves in Ukraine). 

Ephesians seemed appropriate (ironically, I’d been in Ephesians since coming to Ukraine), and we took turns reading passages aloud.  I read Ephesians 4.  Nothing new, right?  I’ve read Ephesians so many times! 

...I was slammed.  As in mid-sentence slammed with conviction to the point I couldn’t read anymore and just sat there mouth gaping. 

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.  They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.  They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.  But that is not the way you learned Christ!—  assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

I am angry and bitter.  I believed God is not good.  I am darkened in my understanding and alienated from God because of my ignorance and hardness of heart.  I’m hurt, angry, and bitter, because I believed God failed me and others who have suffered.  He didn’t rescue me in certain moments or answer certain prayers, and He let certain horrible things happen in my life and in others’ lives.  All this was pent up inside me and instead of responding to those circumstances in faith and trust in the character and promises of the God I knew, I viewed those circumstances as God abandoning me.  I let my darkened understanding harden into bitterness and make me calloused. 

But I was wrong.  God is not unjust.  I am.  Ignorance and hardness defined me, not lack of understanding and abandonment.  My response was wrong, not God’s action.  I was the perpetrator of my own suffering, not the victim.

            I haven’t changed instantly.  I’m still praying God completely renews me in true righteousness and holiness, but the process has begun.  Hallelujah.