Young people dread getting old. When I was young, I couldn’t imagine getting to be the age I am now. I remember when I was a child—maybe eight or nine—I wanted to think of an age that it would be alright to die as I should have accomplished everything I wanted by then. I chose 54, and with my childish mindset I prayed that God would let me live till then. Because by then I should have worked many years in my chosen career, I should have married and I should have had children. After that it didn’t seem like there was much left to do. 

I’m almost two decades past 54, and I’m okay with leaving this earthly life whenever that God-appointed time comes, but I long ago realized there is always something to do. I really want to finish writing a book. I want to write more blogs—tell more people’s stories. I also have started making a scrapbook of each of my children’s lives. There are seven of them and I’m only on child number four. I think I started making them at least a decade ago, maybe longer. Recently I decided I wanted to write a letter to each of my 22 grandchildren to be read by them after I die. One of my daughters quipped that I needed to get started—not because she thinks I might not last much longer, but because I seem so slow at accomplishing these things. 

During my last hair appointment, my hairdresser remarked that life passes so quickly, ever hurrying to that dreadful inevitable—death.  I, however, rather look forward to it, and some days I hope it comes sooner rather than later, or even better that Jesus returns. Mostly because I will finally see Him in His glory and what awaits is beyond anything my mind can fully comprehend or imagine.

Last week I was asked to speak to a group of women at my church about how my views of God had changed through the years of my life. I can’t tell you the number of times I changed what I was going to say as I prepared. By that night, I had narrowed down to three things I hoped to convey.

First, I thought back to my childhood. I always believed in God. I always believed the Bible was true. Both those ideas were demonstrated before me in what I was taught and what I saw in my parents, family, and church friends, which pretty much comprised our whole social group. But I misconstrued some things, probably not so much by what I was told but how I interpreted what I was told. I remember learning Romans 3:23 (“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”), at VBS one year. Right then I decided that I wasn’t going to sin, ever. The idea was reinforced by being told by my known adult world to be good, to behave. I tried, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job. 

I realized before too many years passed that Romans 3:23 was saying everyone was a sinner, but I thought saying a simple prayer could fix that, which I did. I went right on being as good as I could be and always thinking I was succeeding. Eventually this grew into a sort of arrogant, prideful Pharisee-ism—tendencies that can still surface on occasion. 

It’s important to make sure that we as parents explain the Gospel clearly to our children, and that we humbly admit our own sin. As we look for a church family, our goal should be to choose one whose beliefs are solidly founded in Scripture. Even so, in the best of circumstances, our children are born sinners, thanks to Adam. And we start bending toward sinful thinking, sinful reasoning at early ages, even when our behavior is exemplary and our families are living testaments to the Lord. This is a sinful world where sin lurks in every corner, even in good homes and even in churches. Nevertheless, parents who profess Christ as Savior, plant seeds in the little hearts they are raising—some of which might not take as readily as others, but must be carefully planted with close attention given to keeping the soil fertile on which the seed falls, and faithfully removing the rocks and weeds. 

In time, the seeds my parents had planted would by God’s grace sprout and begin growing, but along the way there were things that briefly choked my maturation. I did all the right things, spoke the Christian jargon, yet desired (certain that God was okay with my reasoning) to be popular and liked by both the Christian world and the secular world. If the world liked me and knew I was a Christian, they might want to be Christians, too. In me there grew a desire to be so good that I excelled in school, at extracurricular activities, at religious activities, at jobs, in friendships and with the opposite sex. In short, I desired praise from everyone, even God. Oh, I thanked God for everything, even that I was such a big success.

To introduce the second point, I quote from Lydia Brownback in her Flourish Bible Study series on James: “It’s been aptly said that sometimes you don’t know God is all you need until God is all you have. When we’re feeling self-sufficient, we aren’t consciously aware of our absolute dependence on the Lord for every single thing. But our lack of awareness doesn’t change the reality—at all times, in every circumstance, self-sufficiency is only an illusion.”

As I entered real life, away from home, home church, relatives, and moved to the exciting big city of New York, I wanted to make it big. Like how Frank Sinatra sang about it. I wanted to experience the grand. I wouldn’t lose my values. I could do both. I could keep them and excel. But I couldn’t. And I didn’t. Just like so many of my friends at the time, I got pregnant. Not seeing a way out of disappointing everyone that mattered to me, I opted for an abortion. I was so disappointed in myself, that even as I asked God to forgive me and promised not to get myself into a situation like this again, I was relying on my behavior, not God’s mercy. I hadn’t yet fully understood I was a sinner through and through. In my mind I was just a failed Christian and I needed to do better. I know now that redemption only happens when we see ourselves as the sinners we truly are.

Not long after, I met the man who would become my husband. It seemed we shared similar mindsets and we each wanted to begin afresh. So we got involved in church, made public professions, and began to raise our children in the ways of our faith. I couldn’t shake the fact that my relationship with Jesus wasn’t what it once was and that I couldn’t seem to get back to that point. But it didn’t matter as much when things were going really well. At those times I was just grateful that God had given me a husband and children. A family that from all appearances looked good. Still, there were good and bad times and more and more babies and a lot of things going out of my control. God kept us in good churches with good preaching and good friends, but that stymied plant in my heart that had barely grown over the years, just refused to produce much fruit. 

That is, until my marriage—the thing I idolized as being necessary, good, and right for me—began to show signs of ending. The man that I considered my best friend and soulmate was betraying me. Never did I fault myself for anything. Always wrong was done to me. I was always the victim. Me right, others wrong. And oddly enough during those sleepless nights of distress, my abortion came back to haunt me. I wondered why God would bring that up right now after I had asked for forgiveness as soon as it happened? Perhaps it was just that I hadn’t forgiven myself. For what? For being a person of low repute?

And then one night I had a dream. Jesus Himself was explaining to me in such a compassionate way that it was me who was a sinner. My rightness was wrong. Filthy rags. I had only been disappointed in myself and my behavior before and at the time of the abortion. Never had I acknowledged that I was a sinner, that I needed Christ.  I had only counted on Him helping me whenever I asked for His help. Until this moment,  I had never fully considered or understood that only Jesus had kept God’s law perfectly, and not as merely an example to follow. No, He had willingly paid for my sin laying down His life as a perfect sacrifice, so that my debt of sin for which God had clearly said required my death was fully paid. This, because of God’s love for me, which I was really understanding during this dream. It was like love and light all visiting me at once. So now I saw that God was looking at Jesus’ righteousness when he looked at me—not my failing attempts of self-righteousness. 

Jesus further explained that I was not better or worse than my husband. Jesus had gone to the cross for both of us. Equally. There was no judgement in what I was hearing. Just compassion, mercy, and love. And Truth. Jesus conveyed, since He alone had the power to forgive sins and had forgiven mine, I needed to forgive my husband. Indeed, as Hebrews 10:17 says: “[God]will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

My life took a turn for the better after that. I began to acknowledge my inability to fix my life, to do good on my own. Through Jesus Christ, “the eternal God [became] my dwelling place, and underneath. . . [His] everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27). The more I seek to know God, the more He reveals Himself to me. His promises encourage, resonate, and abound—my favorite, found multiple times through Scripture: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

He has dropped (and continues to do so) sermons, books, friends, music, all saying exactly the right words into my life at exactly the right times. He gives me a desire to really listen and heed His Word. Bible reading and studying take up more and more of my time, and delight me as well as feed me. He quickly calls me to repentance on days when my mind wanders away or self-centered pride gets me off track. Or the times when I’m more inclined to see the speck in someone else’s eye and ignore the log in my own. In other words—God is faithful. Always. I named this blog maturity because I was thinking about how as God works His gift of sanctification in us daily, we do grow more mature. Just like we can’t make the seeds we plant grow, so His Spirit alone grows the seeds in our heart bringing them to fruition. 

Finally, I want those I love to know Jesus. To understand that knowing Him and loving Him is all that truly matters in this life. Everything else is going to end. All the answers we are looking for, all our need to be loved, all our deepest desires, are all and only met in Jesus Christ. I came to understand this most during the hardest time of my life.  I lost my marriage to gain a faithful Husband. These precious words from Isaiah 54:5 say: 

For your Maker is your husband,
    the Lord of hosts is his name;
and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer,
    the God of the whole earth he is called.

I wouldn’t trade those difficult days for anything. If that’s what it took for me to finally see myself as a sinner in need of a Savior and fasten my eyes on Him, so be it. I would rather have Jesus.

I have prayed that I live daily so others can see Christ in me and the hope I have in Him. I prayed that my children might see Him in me as I walked through the days after my marriage. I pray it every day still for my children and grandchildren, and I pray that they, too, would put their full trust In Jesus Christ. 

First Peter 3:15 says: “Always [be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” John Piper comments on this verse in a book  he co-edited with Justin Taylor entitled Suffering and the Sovereignty of God. “What kind of life are we to live that would make people wonder about our hope? If our security and happiness in the future were manifestly secured the way the world secures its future, no one would ask us about it. There would be no unusual hope to see.”

Another chapter of the same book is written by the son of missionary martyr Nate Saint. Stephen F. Saint writes: “I don’t know what role [God] has for you, but I know he has a role. His great passion is expressed in his Great Commission, and he has given it to messy, wimpy people like  you and me. He has made us his ambassadors of reconciliation.”

As I worked in pregnancy center ministry, I had the opportunity to serve many women in similar situations as those I have experienced—unplanned pregnancies, abortions, parenting, difficult relationships—to name a few. The women and men who ministered there with me, also had their own stories. I praise God now for those people and that God could use us and grow us together and share what we knew in the name of Jesus and to the glory of God to those suffering in the same ways we had. 

This morning I was looking at Romans 6 and James 4:6-10, the next chapters and verses in my daily Bible reading. How perfectly ordained to go along with the intent of this blog. I urge you to read Romans 6, but my biggest take away from it today was that my sin has been brought to nothing. I am no longer its slave. So sin shouldn’t have the reign of my life. God should. I should present myself to God to be used righteously for Him. My action becomes obedience. It is easy at times for me to forget these things or to take them for granted. That is why Paul tells us to call them to memory over and over by camping out in God’s word.

The passage in James reinforces this, listing five steps that I try to review daily: 1. Humble myself. 2. Submit to God. 3. Resist the devil. 4. Draw near to God. 5. Repent of sin as soon as I see it. I have learned to start the day, thanking God for still another day, telling Him, “I am here—for whatever purpose You have in mind.” I haven’t reached full maturity. But I’m getting there.