Redemption you Can't Afford
Today you are hearing from Mary!
Mary and I connected on social media and she's another enneagram enthusiast!
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Mary is a Jesus-loving, journal-obsessed, stay-at-home mama of 3 kiddos that she has the privilege and blessing of homeschooling. She has been married to her husband for 12 years. She is a recovering perfectionist and feels called to use her love of writing to help others get a better sense of God’s incredible love for them.
Scripture: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23
This week my oldest son made a big mistake.
He was in his bathroom washing up, and his brother (a typical younger sibling) had jammed the doorknob so that he couldn’t get out. As time went on, my oldest got angrier and angrier, until he finally wrenched the door open in rage…and subsequently swung it into the doorstop with so much force that it burst right through the door and lodged into it.
He was horrified. We just bought this house a few months ago, and it still has that lovely, untouched beauty of “newness” to it.
For him to have now marred that loveliness with the ugly hole in the door staring at him was simply horrible. He came and found me, and as he explained what happened he couldn’t stop the tears from falling; he sobbed out the whole story, ending with, “Mom, I’m sorry. I put all my money on the counter so you can use it to fix it. I’m so sorry!”
Sure enough, I walked over to find my son’s piggy bank upended on the kitchen counter, next to a pile of assorted coins and crinkled-up bills. I went to survey the damage and my heart sank as I saw that this was not a simple patch-it-and-forget-it issue; this was a replace-the-entire-door issue.
I glanced over at that precious pile of money my son had so carefully scrounged up and sadly thought,
“That’s not going to cover it. He can’t afford this mistake.”
In that instant, I was hit with a realization: this is the exact situation all of us as humans are in when it comes to our sin.
We are born into sin from day one, and continue in that sin until we die. No matter if we view our “mess-ups” as major or not, God sees it all the same: lying, stealing, murder, wrath, selfishness…It’s all the ugly base problem of sin coming in and marring the perfect beauty He intended at creation.
Though we may feel awful, and do our best to make up for it and pay for it, the fact of the matter is, we cannot afford our redemption.
If it had been left up to us, there would be absolutely no hope; but God didn’t leave it up to us.
Instead, He stepped in to pay the required price as the only One who could afford it, even though it cost Him the life of His beloved Son. We were just as helpless and desperate as my little boy was with that broken door, dealing with an issue too big and expensive for us to handle on our own.
How beautifully humbling and relieving to realize it’s taken care of, “paid in full” the moment we accept God’s gift of salvation.
So the question is, are you living like your mistakes have been paid for? Or are you still trying to scrounge together enough payment to cover it?
My hope for you and for me is that we will grasp more and more the concept of our sins being fully paid for once and for all, and that rather than striving we will simply praise God for covering our unaffordable redemption.
-Mary
Journaling Prompts:
-Reflect on an experience when you were confronted with how unaffordable God's grace is?
-Thank God for His grace and redemption in your life. How have you seen Him writing a story of redemption in your life?
-Spend time receiving God's grace and forgiveness. How can you walk in forgiveness today?
Action Step:
What would it look like to live in the forgiveness Jesus has brought you? Consider what changes you might need to make today in your day to day.
Prayer:
Jesus thank you for coming and for paying for what we cannot afford. Thank you for the reminder of your grace and goodness today. Help us to live lives that are transformed by you and marked by the forgiveness you freely offer to us. Amen.
