All Locked Up

I have a very good friend that is jammed up. His plight is constantly on my mine. His plight is my plight, it's all our plights. After establishing a relationship with Christ he took his eyes off the Cross for a moment and destruction set in. He forgot that the adversary is in lock-step with us as we go through this world. The only thing that protects us from the ravaging beast that stalks us, looking for opportunity to devour us is our relationship with Christ. My friend knew this and chose to wander off on his own. Now the repercussions of his choices have come to fruition. So, how does this Glorify God? I thought all things were for His Glory. How does the potential incarceration for this man's actions in the past glorify God?

This is the conversation that he and I had recently. After it was finished I realized the answer was still on my lips.

The backstory. My friend like myself had been a drug addict since our early teenage years. Unlike myself, his folks enabled his addiction for the following decade. He was never, ever held accountable for the associated breech in morals and values that are always present with addiction. He also never had severe legal punishment even though he was arrested and convicted for several drug related crimes. No jail time, no problem. Probation on top of probation. His addiction put him through multiple rehabs to no true benefit. Sober up, strengthen up and do it all over again. Until the day Jesus dialed in the "secret combination" that only He knows. I like to explain the way I see Christ positioning us at diff rent times throughout our lives as Him "dialing in our secret combination." I believe that Christ allows life to happen and in the course of the life we are given there are multiple moments when the confluence of event and time come together that position us to clearly be able to choose Christs' gift of redemption.The operative word here is choose. He never forces anything on us. You can't force anyone to love you and Jesus won't force you either. I believe also that as time goes on and we ignore or refuse to acknowledge this invitation from Christ that the circumstances and settings of these moments increase in their severity. What may begin as a gentle tug at our heart strings in childhood my end up a full blown life altering crisis in our adulthood. We as a people are hard-headed. We often need a kick in the head to get our attention. Back in May of 2006 my friend got kicked in the head by Jesus.

There are rehabs and there is Rehab. One is ran by businesses, the others business is helping people establish or re-establish a relationship with Jesus. That's where I met my friend. I had been saved from death by Christ and my friend showed up two weeks later. He like I was out of options, out of fight and out of time. It seemed to he and I that Christ had dialed the combination one last time. He had cried for mercy and had received Grace. For nine months he learned how to live with relationship with Christ. he learned that the secret to success is relationship, accountability, transparency, predictability and purpose. He learned that, if to be whole and healed was what he wanted then acknowledgement of Christs' sacrifice and desire to follow Him was the only way. He did well and after he left the Rehab he even looked good doing it. As in everything of this world, looks can be deceiving. Somewhere along the way my friend says he made just the slightest of "course correction."
A course correction is where you make the slightest adjustment in your direction and in doing so you end up way off course. My friend says that's what happened. He never specified if he first stopped praying or reading his Bible. He didn't go into detail as whether he started missing Church services or perhaps started a relationship that wasn't as wholesome as it should have been. Either way he ended up in a moment of crisis and in that very second he reached behind him for an old familiar solution instead of ahead of him for the Cross. He will tell you that he could have reached out to a pastor or a trusted friend at that moment and divulged the truth. The burden that he had strayed from his path of righteousness and was stumbling and falling. Instead he got high. He started retreating into that dark familiar isolation of guilt that's dressed up like relief. He walked and then ran away from God, the Church and his friends. The longer this went on the more helpless and powerless he felt. He will tell you he felt so ashamed and irredeemable. He was so wrong. That man was only one prayer, one statement of honest sorrow away from forgiveness from both Christ the Savior and Redeemer and all that know him and Him. Now here's the rub.

My friend did reach out. He cried out to Jesus to forgive him. Jesus did. He cried for his friends to forgive his behavior and for our prayers. We did. He re-established a relationship with Christ and the Church that he had ran from. He became accountable and predictable and transparent. He is dependable. He has given his heart to Christ and serves others today.

He goes on trial at the end of next month. he has been charged as a "habitual offender."
You see, during his run from Christ he made a stupid choice. He didn't hurt anyone but himself. He didn't steal or rob anyone. He just broke a rule that because of his past infractions he was not allowed to do. In just a moment of drug seeking indiscretion my friend made a really bad mistake that could cost him up to twelve years in prison for a "victimless crime." needless to say he is freaked totally out. Who wouldn't be. He you are, been through the school of hard knocks and stupid mistakes, only to have found the truth of the ages, Jesus. Then you take your eyes off the cross and you may end up in prison for a decade? I mean really? Is that fair? Can't you just play the system, hire a good attorney?
Make this charge just go away? That's the point. He has officially worked his way into a situation that he ain't running. Jesus has again dialed that combination in. This is no longer about attorneys and crime. It has little to do with judges and justice. This is utterly and completely designed to drive you to your knees and put you on your face in the presence of the Cross. This is when it ain't about you but becomes only about your source. This is the desperation that decrees Jesus. This is the world worst that drives us to Christs' best. This blog, this message is no longer about my friend. It is about all of us. It is about the broken marriage, the lost child, the addicted husband, sister or spouse. The cancer in your body or the end of your world as you've known it. This is about Jesus and our need to know Him. We can choose to recognise when the combination for us has been dialed. The invitation to know Him is presented in the moment of desperation. We can choose to have and maintain relationship with Him. We can anticipate and avoid the sorrows of my friend if we will only learn from him. When you recognise the moment is on you to choose to accept Christ (and you do, you always know when He is knocking on the door) do it. Take that step. In your guts you know it to be true. don't hesitate. If you've know that relationship and you've strayed no matter how far off course, stop now. Get on your knees and close the gap between you and Jesus with just one statement. God forgive me. Stop relying on yourself. Recognise that your situation just got unmanageable. You want a way out of your mess? Know this, Jesus is spinning the lock on your heart right now. What are you gonna do about it?

Today my friend has resigned himself to the fact that the only way to navigate what is to come is to be in relationship with Christ. He has resigned himself to letting Jesus deal with what is to come. This is faith. Please pray for and with my friend.