Welcome back to another episode of Struggling Well, as we have turned the calendar into the month of December with this podcast and
jingle bells
and that means that you know what's not far away and
Christmas
celebration of Christmas. So and that's not necessarily what we're going to talk about this morning. No,
but we are heading that direction and so we hope that you are getting ready to celebrate the birth of our savior.
And you're probably getting ready with your Christmas cards and your family pictures and your Christmas letters and I think I probably talked about this last year and it feels like it's still a be in my bonnet, but I Jimmy and I love getting Christmas cards. We do. We don't send them out.
We don't send them out. I was going to say nobody gets any from us.
No, that's true. But we love getting Christmas cards with your family's pictures on them. Whomever whether you're local or out of town or whatever. We really enjoy those and I keep them for a good while because it's hard for me to throw a family in the trash. But the thing that is hard is that the pictures are perfect. The families all look perfect. The letters often tout a perfect family situation through the year and we know that's not always the case. It's good to hear the good news about your families. It really is. We do enjoy that. but every year I threaten Jimmy that we're going to send out a real life Christmas letter. which I've never done.
No.
And we probably never will.
We probably never will. But it does
So we just do the podcast instead.
Yeah, we do the podcast instead. But it does remind me that at Christmas and not just Christmas, all through the year, people are hurting. People are struggling with a lot of different things. And Christmas is a wonderful time of year. It really is. I mean, the stores are already all decorated. That's fun. people are wondering what the perfect present is for their family. That can be stressful, but it's also fun when you give somebody something that they really enjoy. That's a that's an enjoyable experience, I think. I do remember the year that our grandkids were little and I got for all the grandkids Nerf guns,
right?
Except for one grandchild. And that one grandchild, I thought that I was being really h I was really honing in on what her interests were. I don't know if I've ever talked about this on live before,
but I really wanted to hone in on her interest. And she and I had gone to the map store a lot. I loved the map store. It's no longer here in our town. If there's one in your town, go to it. But I would take her all the time and we'd buy these little books and stuff. And so that year, I gave everybody these Nerf guns. They were little handheld ones. I think they were four bucks a piece, but I gave her I need a drum roll. I gave her a globe and you should have seen her face. All the kids have their Nerf guns out. You remember this?
Oh, I do. How can I have forget it?
They're shooting at one another and she's standing there with a globe and within a few minutes her face began to crumble and she ran into our bedroom and just sobbed her eyes out. The globe costs like 50 bucks, but the Nerf guns at $4. 99, that's what she wanted. Man, oh man, did I miss the mark.
Yeah,
really miss the marks and it'll probably happen again this year.
It probably will. That's why I always have said they're getting to the age where we just give them cash.
Oh, I can't do that. I don't like to give them cash.
They don't ever return though. They don't ever return.
They don't return the cash. That's true. In a roundabout way. Okay. Very roundabout way.
Very roundabout. I think it's coming.
This leads me to something that's been on my mind and it's the idea of missing the mark. I totally blew it that Christmas and we still joke about it and she was just a little girl and when I can find one I try to get her a globe ornament just to remind her of that happy occasion. but missing the mark is something that we see often in scripture. and in one case and we've people this is a story people know probably ad nauseium. I still hope that it does something to our hearts but it's the story of David. And we know that David was a man after God's own heart and God the prophet Nathan chose him. He had all these handsome brothers, but and he was the youngest and they chose him. And there's a ton of stories about him, but we know that the one big story was the sin that he committed with Bashibba. And I'm not going to talk about that as much as he missed the mark for a long time, right?
Because Nathan went to him and kind of gave him like a story and said, "What would you do?" Can you recall the story?
No, just that as he tells the story, he then as he as after David pronounces what he would do, Nathan says to him, "You're the person I'm talking about."
Yeah. And that was, you know, horrifying for na for David. But this is just a strange concept, but it's come to me as I've been thinking about David. And also, and you all know this, if you've been listening at all that I've been studying the book of Jonah with the Bible study that I do on Wednesdays. And what a an interesting little book. but I want to talk about repentance in reverse. And it's not don't write it down, don't quote me. It's nothing worth thinking more about than this. That David by the time it I think according to commentators, it took David about 18 months before he repented of his sin with Bashibba. And in the main in the meantime, lots of horrible stuff had happened. They their son died, their baby died, and it was just a horrible time. But it took him 18 months to repent. And what did he need to repent of? Well, I think when we read Psalm 51, we get an idea. He says, "Have mercy on me, oh God, according to your steadfast love. according to your abundant mercy. Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight." And when he talks about the transgressions, we can name them. We I mean, it started out with him not being out to war when he should have been. He was the king. He needed to be leading his people. Then, you know, then the whole idea of him seeing Bath Sheba and what happens after that, sending her husband, bringing him home, hoping that he would be with Ba Sheba so that the pregnancy could be covered up. That didn't work. Sends him out to war, to the front line, he dies. I mean, it's just a mess. So, his transgressions were he needed to go back to the original place of where he stepped away from what God wanted him to do. And what it was is what is at the core for me and for you is when he says against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. And I've got to get back to that very first place, that repentance and reverse where I go back. Where was the place where I disobeyed what God was telling me, disobeyed what the spirit was convicting me of? And then there are sins that occur after that. So I have to go back to that place and repent at that place.
And where was that for Jonah?
For Jonah, I think it was when if you look at the text, it was when he first, you know, started running. I mean, he God tells him, I want you to go to Nineveh and I want you to tell them who I am so that they'll repent. And Jonah was like he starts running and he runs to Tarses to catch a boat and or he goes to where'd he go? to catch the boat.
Japa. He goes to Japa to catch the boat to Tarsus, which is the furthest location he can get to. So maybe his sin began when God said to him, "I want you to go here." And in his heart, he said, "No."
Okay. And that's a I'm trying to process for me today in repentance. Where would I where would I go if I'm going to go back to where it all starts? And most likely it would be going back to the things that I've harbored in my heart before they ever took full bloom in actions.
Mhm.
Would that be a fair way to put it?
I think so.
And I think, you know, when I read this about David, I mean, for those months before he repented, I mean, he was in agony, but he had to get he had to get back to the place where is it's when he said no to God. Not in a like he didn't look in God's face and go no. But as a king, he was to be on the front lines leading his people,
right?
He said no.
Right.
He was up on a roof watching someone in a compromised position. He should have said no.
No. And so it's so Yeah. I think so many times we can see the end result of our poor choices and we can stop there and say that's where repentance has to take place. But the truth the matter is it has to take place back where I found my heart choosing to go against the things that I know are to be true from what God has said. And I think it's a valid and good point, Suzi, that you make that we don't often go back to where it goes to where I can honestly say against you and you only have I sinned.
He goes on to say in verse six, "Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart." And then He goes in verse 10, "Create in me a clean heart, oh God, and renew a right spirit within me." I'm not trying to, you know, take a passage out of context, but create a clean heart in me. That's an internal thing. And so his sin began internally be before it became external.
Yeah. And before there's any evidence of it, it's taken place. So when I think about repentance in reverse, that phrase, which is a great phrase, I think about the fact that got to look back to when it when was it in my heart when I decided to step away from what I knew to be true that God wanted me to do. Not when it became full bloom and was evident to everybody else, but when it was when the seeds of it began in my heart. And so again, I look at that and I link it in with one of the verses that you know is a favorite verse of mine in Proverbs 4:23. above all else, guard your heart. because that determines the course of your life. So above everything else, I want to guard my heart. And when I stop guarding my heart, that's when the truth is behaviors are going to hatch from that.
You know, the reason why this is on my mind is because we went out to dinner with a gentleman a couple of weeks ago or last week actually and as we were talking and we're talking through a situation that we're in right now and He looked at me and he said, ", I think you need to talk about this and he was talking I had made reference to some stuff in my past, some emotions in my past." And when he said, "I think you need to talk about this.", not like on a podcast, but talking to somebody else, it hit me like, "Oh my goodness, that is there. That is present. I do have that emotion and I've managed to I don't know how it's come out. I'm sure it has, but it's an internal thing that I have not I don't think I've dealt with. And I'm going to be real honest with you all and say I don't think I've dealt with it yet. And I'm a little bit afraid. A little bit of like, how will this undo me? What is God doing here? can I handle the truth about my heart? And that's for David. Nathan was exposing his heart,
right? And That's true for all of us of all the things that I can put a cap because of I've seen the damage that happen sometimes. I can put a cap on my behaviors so that I can ignore what's going on in my heart and that really is what I need to pay attention to is what's going on in my heart.
David says at the end of Psalm 51, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise.
No. And so at the end of the day, as much as you fear or I fear being undone by God, he David sums it up so well, God will not despise that. He's not going to trample our hearts when we come to him with the confession of what's going on in our hearts where we've sinned against him. So this is not necessarily the message of Christmas, but it is in the sense of putting our trust and our hearts in the hands of a God who loves us and who will not trample those
well but on one hand it is a story about Christmas because Jesus came and yes he was this baby in a manger and the wise men came and gave him gifts but he didn't come just to be some cute baby or a carpenter he came to die for the sins of the world and he came to die for my sins. And so it is about repentance and it is about repentance in reverse because I've got to repent. That's what he came for.
Right. Well, we trust that this will lead you into the Christmas season in a way maybe you hadn't anticipated. We hope you have a good week.