More than Cardboard - Living Between the Christmases

“Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.”

Matthew 3:8

Last week in the blog I shared with you a story from my previous congregation in Flower Mound, Texas.  It was a about a ministry there called “Celebrate Recovery.”  This is a Christian recovery ministry patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous.   However Celebrate recovery is not limited to recovering alcoholics.  Celebrate recovery invites anyone who has a “hurt, habit or hang up.”  Since we all have at least one of those, Celebrate Recovery is a recovery ministry for everyone.  Last week I described how on one Sunday people from Celebrate Recovery gave a “cardboard” testimony during worship.  Different people stood in front of the church and, without speaking a word, gave a powerful testimony to how God had changed their lives through this ministry.  They simply held on a piece of cardboard.  On one side each person had written a one or two word summary of their personal hurt, habit or hang up. They wrote words like “addict” or “alcoholic” or “pornography” or “anger issues.”   They held the board for a moment so everyone could read it.  Then they flipped it over to show how God had changed their lives.  On the other side were words like “forgiven,”  “transformed by God’s grace,” “set free from addiction.”  That was a powerful day in the life and ministry of Lamb of God.

Their cardboard testimonies provide a powerful illustration of how God calls us to live our lives “between the Christmases,” between our Lord’s birth and His second coming.   Those pieces of cardboard are a metaphor for it means to live in repentance.  What happened for those people at Celebrate Recovery… what God is looking for in you and me is more than just cardboard.  He is seeking what John describes in Matthew 3, that we “bear fruit in keeping with repentance.”  He is seeking to transform our lives… turn us around and send us in a new direction.

I know it’s easy to say I am sorry, to wear repentance as a mask, to put on a religious show for everyone… as a way to hide your ongoing life of sin.   For the Pharisees  and Sadducees – that was all that they were doing by coming to John the Baptist.  They weren’t sorry for their sin.  They didn’t want to change.  They didn’t think that their lives needed any change.  Their appearance at the Jordan River was simply a piece of cardboard to hide behind.  You and I can do that too.  We can put on a show to fool others. We may even fool ourselves.  But we can’t fool God. 

What God is seeking to do in our lives… what happened in the lives of those people who attend Celebrate Recovery is much more than simply flipping over a piece of cardboard.  I think of a friend who was playing music for the opening worship at Celebrate Recovery.  He would play his guitar.  Then when the ministry broke up into small groups, he would go home. He told himself that he didn’t need any help.  But God kept working on his heart… showing him his struggle with alcohol.  Finally admitting that struggle, asking forgiveness, and seeking help to change –  his life began “bearing fruit in keeping with repentance.”  Don’t’ get me wrong, his forgiveness didn’t depend on him changing.  God had forgiven him in Christ before he ever repented.  Having forgiven Him God completed the work of repentance.  He changed him.  That change wasn’t a show.  It wasn’t easy.  He had to die – die to alcohol… die to pride… die to self so that God could raise Him up with Christ.   Here is how Paul described repentance in his own life, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.  And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”  That’s way more than a piece of cardboard.

Repentance goes even further.  Repentance is not simply turning that piece of cardboard over one time and you are done.   This being crucified and raised to new life is not a one-time event.  Those folks in celebrate recovery still struggle.  Sometimes they fall.  But they have accountability partners to help them when they are tempted and to lift them up when they fall.  As we live between the Christmases, we continue to struggle with sin every day.  Every day our God calls us back to Himself, invites us to confess and die again to sin.  Every day He raises us up… He forgives our sins… He flips the cardboard again and again… until the day when He comes again… On that day there will be only one side of the cardboard to show… the side that say “God has made all things new… including you and me.”