SIN. LIKE. GLUE.

If you’re like me, you get tired of fake religion that has the appearance of godliness (2 Timothy 3:5) but lacks the power, purpose and peace of an honest, intimate and abiding relationship with God, through Jesus Christ.

Some Sunday mornings, at church, I find myself singing hymns and praise songs that are more aspirational than they are actual. You know what I mean?

Take the hymn I Surrender All, for example; it goes like this, “All to Jesus I surrender; all to Him I freely give; I will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live. Refrain: I surrender all, I surrender all; All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all…”

What!?! “All”? “I surrender ‘all’”! I don’t think so! The reality is that none of us, no Christian, anywhere, can sing that song as “actual”, and if they did, they would be singing a lie to God! The reality is that our struggle to surrender just “some” to God is a daily battle, wrought with failure and fought only by the grace of God and His tender mercies.

Now, on the other hand, there’s this song! "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". Now here’s a hymn that is “actual”! I can get behind this! I can sing this to God with 100% confidence! Listen…it goes like this.

“Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God; He, to rescue me from danger, interposed His precious blood; how His kindness yet pursues me, mortal tongue can never tell, clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me, I cannot proclaim it well. O to grace how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be! Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.

That’s what I’m talking about! That’s real, that’s actual, that’s how it is, right? And that’s the kind of praise I want to sing, that’s the kind of Christian I want to be.

Let’s get real. Let’s face the fact that only because of Christ’s righteousness can we hold our heads high and tell everyone the truth about Jesus and His free gift of eternal life. And until we’re with God in heaven, we will have struggles; we will battle sin and the old flesh of the former man before Jesus changed us. Until then, the old man does daily battle with the new man. And what God wants for the new man is in direct opposition to what the old man wants. Because of this, you will mess up; you will fail. You will fall short and that’s O.K….just be honest, be real.

Sin Like Glue

by Curtis Brickley

I wanna write a song, honest and real

About what “is” and not what I “feel”

I’m just not taking every breath for You,

I wish it weren’t true,

But Jesus – I’m failing, my sin’s like glue

It won’t come off; but its not who I am,

I stumble and I fall, but you’re more than a man.

You came to live in me, to make me to be

A different man, someone ‘not me’

This truth my Jesus is over my head,

You gave me life, when I should ‘a been dead

I wanna write a song that’s honest and real

About what “is” and not what I “feel”

The man I am can’t hold his head high

I eat from the tree and I know why

It is who I am, when I’m apart from you

Its flesh and its blood, but I’m not what I do.

But you came to live in me, to make me to be

A different man, someone ‘not me’

I’m lov’n the day when all this is done,

When You descend on a cloud, when we all become one

Then finally I’ll be what “is”, and not what I “feel”

Perfected in heaven, I’ll be honest and real.

I don’t know about you but I’m thankful that God did not wait for me to become perfectly loveable before He declared me perfectly righteous! Not righteous because of me…OH NO… but righteous because of the One who died for me! It’s crazy love to think that, For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

It is indeed Good News that He invites every man, woman and child of every tribe, tongue and nation to exchange all of their sin for all of Christ’s righteousness; every wrong thought, word and deed, every defect, fault and flaw, traded even, for the absolute perfection, unfathomable love, and amazing grace of God’s Son, Jesus.

How can He do that? Why would he do that? Exactly! That is the grace of God! He gives us what we don’t deserve! He makes us into something awesome and brand new, a totally new creation! He sees us differently than we see ourselves!

We only see ourselves from a distance but God sees past the old man, up close and real.

Instead of seeing our failures, He sees Christ’s successes.

Instead of seeing the shadow of what once was, He sees the substance of what now is.

Instead of seeing our rags, He sees the riches of our inheritance. Now that is grace, that is the love God has for His children!

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. – 1 John 3:1-3

Be patient. Be real. Love God. And love your neighbor as yourself.