An Allegiance to Sin
For a few years I have lived my life in selfish allegiance. I pledged commitment to a lifestyle of heartache and heartbreaks. Profession: adulteress. Task: breaking hearts. This was my role for upward of two years. My alibi was a friendly sweetheart who just couldn’t help it that guys fell for her everywhere she went. I had a way about me—something that caused men to notice me. I craved attention, and when guys began to give it to me, I wrapped my rope about them and pulled them in with all my might. I longed to feel longed for. I wanted someone to love me—but I offered anything but real love in return.
True, it was not always my intention to cause men to “fall” for me. Sometimes I was just going about my normal business when one would suddenly become interested. It was when they noticed me however that I quickly went into the mindset of playing my games to see how far I could draw them in before turning my back on them and running away. I feigned surprise when another one would profess love to me and I would have to turn him down—breaking his heart, and damaging my own. It was a pattern repeated again and again. As soon as I broke one heart, there was another man in the picture, and the cycle started all over again. I used my tactics on the men I knew were vulnerable—the ones I knew I could “get” without any problem.
At the time, I did not see myself as the one causing the heartache. I blamed the guys, saying it was their own fault that they fell for one that could not be won. What was I to do about it? Within the last few months however, the Lord has been doing some mighty work in my life. A couple weeks after my move thousands of miles from home, where I was suddenly living away from all that I had previously known, the Lord made it very clear to me that I had been living in gross sin. I had been living a life of adultery while claiming to be walking in the truth. I wrote in my journal: “I had full ability and responsibility to deny those guys long before their hearts ever became engaged and entangled with my deceptive affections. But because my flesh adores the attention, and I long to be needed and loved in someone’s eyes, I stole the love that was in their hearts instead of guarding it… I was irresponsible and have now wasted many opportunities to be a kind sister to these men of God.” I was saddened by this realization, but true repentance did not come until a couple months later. The Lord convicted me that even after He gave me the revelation of my sin, I was still walking in it, instead of turning my back on that life of deceitfulness. Once again He spoke to me, showing me my sin and begging me to turn from it.
Revelation
My mentor at college had made for myself and each member of my cell group name pictures for our doors before we ever arrived at school in August. Each one was different, being inspired by my mentor’s creativity and the Holy Spirit. Within the first few weeks at school, each member of my cell group had told my mentor how much they loved their name picture—how appropriate it was for them, and how it fit who they were. My mentor asked me if I felt the same about mine, but honestly, I saw no connection between my name picture and the person I was or the things I enjoyed. But God had not yet revealed to me what connection to me it held.
Only about a month ago as I was walking into my room at school, my eyes fell on the picture of my name—my name spelled out on stones on the ground—and the Lord gave me clear revelation of the meaning of the picture. In an instant, words and images flashed through my mind, causing me to stop in the middle of the dorm hallway in disbelief. God clearly spoke to me in that moment through the picture. I saw myself standing in front of a crowd of people—alone—and I knew who I was: I was the adulteress (see John eight) brought to Jesus by the scribes and Pharisees who were ready to stone me for my sin. However, Jesus was standing there saying to them, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” And, unable to throw the stones at me because of their own sin, they dropped them in the dust—and there they lay, spelling my name. Jesus then said to me, “I do not condemn you; go and sin no more.” I could hardly believe what had just passed through my mind, but I knew without a doubt that it had been from the Lord and He had a message for me—He was telling me that the life of sin that I had been living was to become a part of my past, and that He was calling me forth from that to enter into something new and better. I was no longer to be defined as an adulteress, because that part of my life was over forever. It had taken over three months for God to reveal to me the meaning of the picture to me, but He had waited to do it until He knew I was ready for sincere repentance.
Crossing Nameless
“Repentance is, in fact, another way of saying that the bad past is to be considered as the starting-point for better things. We bungled the last opportunity; very well. Let us admit that and try to do better with the new one” (Dorothy L. Sayers—Begin Here).
And so I begin again—living a life of newness, abandoning ways of old and stepping forth to be the woman of God my Jesus has created me to be. As Jars of Clay sings: “Missing the me from You You gave to me/I don’t like the one I have created today/Crossing nameless from the one I’ve earned/to be the one, the one You gave to me!” (Overjoyed)
{I’m weak; and I’m poor. I am broken, Lord, but I’m Yours. Hold me now.}
