Habitual Disobedience

Last week I had a chance to visit for about half an hour with a person who identifies as transvestite, but that isn’t the main point of this article.  We’ll get to that later.  I was filling in at the office for Cornerstone Prison church inside the South Dakota State Prison, because Pastor Rick Van Ravenswaay’s brother recently had an aneurysm, and Rick was with his family most of the week. (prayers needed)  Requests were piling up to visit with a pastor, so I went in and met with a few people to ease some of the workload.

The man I met with had recently accused another inmate of a very serious crime against him, and we talked through the hurt feelings involved in that experience.  That was when he explained his identity to me and his plans for his future.  At this point he identifies as male, and he goes by his given name, but he feels he will be happier if he can undergo the treatments necessary to become a woman.  He shared with me the name he has picked out given the opportunity to become female.

It was a challenging conversation, but one moment really stood out.  This individual recently accepted Jesus as Savior and Lord at a Faith Fellowship retreat, so I asked him how he was reconciling his faith to his plan to become a woman.  I asked if he had prayed to God about this decision.  He simply said, “I know God will love me either way.  If I go through with the change, God will still love me.”  No profound response came to mind at the time, but God later used his words to give me a glimpse into my own heart.

Remember after David stole Bathsheba from her husband, Uriah, and tried to cover over his sin with deceit and murder?  It took being confronted by the prophet Nathan to come to his senses.  Nathan shared a parable of a rich man stealing a poor man’s prized lamb and then this happened:

David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die!  He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”  Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!”  (2 Sam. 12:5-7)

In the same way I was convicted by the inmate’s words and my own reaction.  After he justified his plan by saying that God would love him no matter what he does, part of me wanted to pass judgment on him and say, “With that reasoning, anybody could do anything they want, right?  Your decision makes me question your faith.”  However, the point of this article is that even though I can easily see the holes in his argument, I am often blinded to the ways I use the same argument in my own life.  How many times do I willingly make a bad decision and either consciously or unconsciously let myself off the hook by appealing to God’s grace?

Mike introduced the term “areas of habitual disobedience” last week.  In a sense these are the behaviors or decisions in our lives where we miss the mark yet justify it by thinking, “God will love me anyway.”  God’s grace is boundless, and yet “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left…”  (Heb. 10:26)  The question is not whether or not you have areas of habitual disobedience in your life.  You do…and so do I.  The question is what we are doing to address them and bring our lives in line with the obedience God desires and demands.  As the story above illustrates, we see faults in others, yet sadly we remain oblivious to our own.  May it not be so with us!  May each of us have a prophet Nathan in our lives, and may we also lovingly play that role for someone else.

Cory Grimm

 

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