And No Detergent Gets It Out

 

We have all fallen short of the glory! When I say, “All!” I mean everybody! And when I say, “Fallen!” just look at the bruises on your ass because they’re all still there!

 

We all find it easy to acknowledge our various sins in confession, but you don’t need the Ten Commandments as a mile marker.  The do’s and don’ts were written on your heart from before your birth. Knowing the capabilities of your fallen nature is only the first part. Accepting it is a whole other situation.

 

 Conviction is a grim reality where you face God’s justice and receive the sentence that you so righteously deserve. The hardest part is accepting forgiveness. As you hang your head in shame, realizing the fruit of your actions and knowing that you still have the same little devil sitting on your left shoulder to distract the influence of that angel that sits on your right. You will try to justify your actions, so you lie!

 

We all try to present our case to God and use Biblical legalisms or various translations as we try to wiggle out of the things we’ve done. Everything from, “The Devil made me do it,” to, “I wasn’t wid dem brothas,” but be sure your sins will find you out. Never confuse justifying with justification. Justifying is where you lie to God. Justification is where Jesus tells you the truth. 

 

Sin leaves a mark. A lesion, if you will. This mark is like a scar after all is said and done that you can run your conscience over it and still feel the bump. A stain on your white robe and no detergent gets it out. You can’t get it out. You may try to cover it with sanctimonious behavior, but it is always there. So, you live with it. And die. 

 

 When Paul was blinded by the truth on the Damascus Road he was healed later. But not completely. He makes mention of having to sign his epistles with large letters and gives Doctor Luke credit for helping him write. He said that the people of Ephesus would have plucked their eyes out and given them to him if they could have. 

 

Didn’t Jesus have the power to heal Paul? Of course He did. But Paul didn’t need that. He was still wearing his Temple Garment. But when he knelt before Nero’s sword, he could still see the spots. He could still feel the scars and he could not deny them. They were still there. Damascus Road really happened. Jesus was really there. And Paul was really healed. And that’s why Paul is really still with us today. That devil on your left shrouds you in darkness and that angel on your right leads you to the light. 

 

At the age of three I was stricken with polio and encephalitis. My mother was praying in the chapel at Schumpert Sanitarium in Shreveport, Louisiana. I was three, and although the memory is fogged by time, youth, and a swelling of the brain, a condition that could kill me as it would many of my classmates in 1954, I remember! A nun came in my room to check on me. No IVs. No machine going “Bing Bing Bing.” Just a nun bringing a bowl of water. 

 

She washed my face and told me that tomorrow I’d be leaving the sanitarium. I didn’t lend any credibility to her words. Even at three years old I knew I was dead. That was until the next day when I was in the hallway playing with my fourteen-year-old cousin, LeRoy, pushing him in a wheelchair that was meant for me. And I walked out of the hospital that very day. But I didn’t walk out completely healed. To this day I can still see the spots in my right eye. A memorial that I was really there. It really happened. And Jesus really cured me. Me and Paul. With our spots before our eyes. 

 

Did I sin after that? You bet your bippy I did. Sinning’s fun! I’ve been in Country Music since 1969. I’ve done sins you can’t even spell. Jesus jacked me up again in 1970 when, while working in a gas station, a drunk woman came in and knocked my legs off. Well only one. The other was still attached, technically. They glued it back on and I kept right on sinning. 

 

My promiscuous nature was only kept in check by my antebellum childhood and my clumsiness with women. As a teen my mom whacked me on the head with a frying pan and told me she’d better not ever catch me abusing a woman. But I still got around, and around, and around. I have been married on many occasions because my only pick up line was, “Will you marry me,” and they said, “Yes!” And my relationships were so bad that I thought “PMS” stood for “Pack my stuff!”

 

But one day I listened to that angel on my right shoulder, and I accepted Jesus. I had that forgiveness I told you about.  I just couldn’t ever take Jesus at his word. I still had that sin nature. But now I had a super nature. I was like Adam and Eve eating that fruit after God told them they would surely die. Like them, I thought that if I didn’t die right then that I could find a technicality in God’s Word only to find that I was slip sliding away. This is where free will comes in. God never takes that away. “Let us make man in our own image.” Even the Devil has free will. Like a drunken sailor he told one third of the angels, “Hold my beer and watch this!”

 

When I was in sin, I prayed for bigger feet so I could at least try to stomp out the fires of hell when I arrived. I do have big feet. I don’t know if that’s an answer to my prayer or I got them from my daddy. But although you might be saved you must grow in faith. Paul tells us that we must “put on the armor of God.” Newborn babies can’t drive a car. They have to be able to reach the pedals. 

 

Life is a spiritual journey between realizing your sins and really understanding the scars. Understanding those scars is conviction. A true, deep-seated sorrow for your actions and knowing you had no way out. You cannot undo what you’ve done. Those sins leave that scar on your soul. A bump that is always there, but only as a reminder of the plastic surgeon that fixed it. And that surgeon is Jesus! 

 

Jesus took your lesions at Golgotha. And He is the only one who can quiet that left shoulder devil. And the treatment is free. All you have to do is understand your conviction and really accept the suspended sentence. Quit lying, hang your head and take His hand. It’s between you and Him. 

 

My partner, Vic, when reminded of his sins by those who haven’t hung their heads yet, smiles, points his finger up to heaven, and just says, “Forgiven!” Those who have faith will hear. Those who don’t never will.