spirit diagnostics.

i just need to take a hot minute and say, "whoa."

last week i wrote a post entitled "redemption calling." & it has taken far bigger of a life than i ever imagined.

amanda asked on one of the influence fora last week how we as bloggers deal with writing about the hard things.

i told her my coping method is to forget the post exists until it goes live and the feedback starts arriving.

i didn't expect this post to get as much mention on the internets as it has so far, so for that, thank you. thank you for believing in these small words of mine to communicate a grander truth than you or could possibly understand in any measure.

i know it looked brave to say what i said. and it felt that way.

but in truth? i wanted to not hit publish on that post. i wanted not to feel so compelled about saying those things even though i was blindly passionate about someone needing saying those things and feeling fearless about me being the one to do it until i actually had to contemplate the idea that someone beside myself were going to read it.

i am a big believer in blogging what you feel comfortable blogging.

but sometimes compulsion will shove us clear out of that possibility.

i fully believe in a pragmatic, no apologies, open approach to faith. we're broken. we're hopeless. but He brings hope and grace and light to us, even though we don't deserve. we will screw up the reception and the living of that gift, but it's grace enough He gives us the ability to receive in any measure, much less allows us to bear witness of it to others. that's the story. it's heartrending but He makes the ending beautiful, and in the process, us beautiful as well.

sometimes - a lot of times - God will call us to do the things that scare us. and that for me was writing a pragmatically oriented post on sexual sin. sin is sin. i'm making no apologies or excuses for that. i would say it was the end of the story, but the beauty is, it isn't. and if i believe the end of the story is redemption, then i have to believe that redemption covers all sin. every last one.

i think - i believe - i know: we need to stop coloring in the details of this story we don't understand. we need to stop grading sin as more or less severe. we never know how serious a given sin is because we can't see the full effects of that sin. we also never know what kind of sin a person is struggling with in private and how that sin is strangling them. i remember saying to a friend once i think hidden sins are more serious because they're the ones that strangle soonest. and i think the sins we can see are really only symptoms of the sins we can't.

i believe firmly that discernment is a spiritual gift because there are so many grey areas when it comes to sin that we can't hope to wade through it all and make any sense of it without some sort of spiritual endowment. sometimes, for me, sin has been listening to secular music. is it always? of course not. but when i'm listening to secular music and letting that fill me, it absolutely is. and so there are season where i will deliberately avoid listening to secular music. it's not because i believe non-christian music is inherently sinful, it's because when that music takes me away from chasing Christ, that music becomes something that introduces sin into my life.

i think, like cars, we need a diagnostic system. like those vehicles, we have it wired in us; like them, we need an outside source analyzing it and cluing us in to what's going on. this is why we have the Holy Spirit: to teach us to read that diagnostic system. to teach us what introduces more life to us and what introduces more death.

i want to run from what introduces more death. i want to read life, see life, hear life, and breathe life so i can write life and speak it. i want to write the brave posts and do the brave things when i'm called to, even when in my mind i'm hiding until i get feedback from y'all and have to deal with the reality that it's out there. i want my voice to be an echo of the only Source of life when i write those posts and do those things. & i want to further learn how to deal with the tough topics, the hard discussions, with more mercy and more grace.

because none of us deserve either.

but we're blessed by His hand with both.