​78. If You Aren’t the Worst Sinner You Know

Practical application, meaning what is read can rest in your head, but it isn’t meant to stay there.

I’m talking about Scripture, of course.

How can we take the very guide of our lives and work these hundreds of pages into daily doings?

How can God’s breath be more than the force that animates us, becoming the work of our own two hands?

Jesus made it simple. Love God before anyone and anything else and love your neighbor as yourself.

Oh, no problem then.

Except for when you go to Wal-Mart and that lady in the rumpled sweatshirt cuts you off with her cart and then looks at you like it’s your fault.

Or maybe when your pay is cut yet again and your boss doesn’t look remotely bothered by it.

These are God moments. He’s giving us an opportunity to apply what we know to be true. To love through our circumstances and to always come back to the fact that His mercy was laid upon us so why can’t we free our hearts enough to share that mercy with others?

As our former pastor, Kyle Idleman, put it once: “If you aren’t the worst sinner you know, you don’t know yourself very well.”

Unfortunately, I’ve had eons to get to know me, and I’m knee-deep at the foot of the cross.

So when that cart comes barreling towards me and that sweatshirt is more rumpled than a sock lost at the bottom of a laundry basket, I’ll pause and remember:

I am forgiven, and therefore, I must forgive.