Mike’s Story
My parents became followers of Jesus before I was born and went to work for a Christian organisation, so I grew up hearing about Jesus and being taught how to live for Him. I had the privilege of being around a lot of very committed Christians who gave up a lot in order to serve in the organisation we were a part of. I also got to see first-hand the amazing transformation that God worked in the lives of people who were sometimes living pretty wild lives, but when they met Jesus their desires shifted and they found a peace and joy that eluded them before. I always found that deeply moving, because I knew that a relationship with Jesus not only makes this life better but changes everything for the next life; and that’s what really counts.
Yet as I got older there was also a fascination in me to try out some of the stuff they were doing before they met Christ. I felt ashamed of being drawn to stuff I knew God hates; and that shame led to feeling distant from God. That in turn led to indulging in a whole bunch of things that I thought I could keep secret. I didn’t want to be a bad example to anyone else and continued to struggle with a load of guilt and shame while looking like a ‘good Christian’ on the outside.
One side of me felt it would be easier to stop believing in God and give myself permission to just do whatever I wanted without feeling guilty. But I’ve seen too much and experienced too much to stop believing in God. Besides that, I genuinely still wanted to help other people come to know Jesus and receive eternal life from Him.
One day I was working on my car and things weren’t working out. I got incredibly angry and went in to a rage, swearing and hitting things as a whole lot of frustration spewed out of me. I wondered if God was finally done with me. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out to be a Christian.
It was during this tough time that I realised how my story of becoming a follower of Jesus was different to the people whose lives I saw turned around as I was growing up. Those people had accumulated a lot of junk in their lives that they turned away from when they came to know Jesus. It was so liberating for them! But as dramatic as that change was, they’d still have to keep doing that as God revealed more sin in their lives that He wanted to purify them from. That’s exactly what He was doing with me. In His kindness He was guiding me to realise the ways that my heart rebels against His ways. He was exposing where that leads and helping me make a conscious choice that I didn’t want to go down that path.
I thought the fact that there was so much inner junk that I still wrestled with meant that I wasn’t a true Christian. The truth is that I am a Christian, it’s just I still have a long way to go to become like Jesus! Even one of Jesus’ original disciples wrote about this as an old man: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9).
I’ve learned that I can either focus on my own failure and shame or I can focus on the love and patience of God, remembering the fact that Jesus paid the price for all my sins and is purifying me as I keep trusting in Him. Confession of sin is not shameful, it’s a step back into the waiting arms of God!