All The Way Down

Hi again, Cindy,

You have quite a story so far. I’m not sure why your other counselor was entertained by it. It appears to be full of tragedy and pain, with none or very little godly success. I would be interested in hearing the story about how you came to believe you are a Christian in the first place and what that means to you.

You need to know that I enjoyed reading your story because I care about you, but telling the story does not change the story, nor does it make the story any better. You might feel good about telling it, but if you’ve noticed, the good feeling only lasts a short time.

The only thing that will change the story is to begin telling yourself the truth about your life, and particularly your current situation. You said you are living with your boyfriend, who is the father of your third child, but you didn’t write it like you thought it was sin to do any of this. What I mean about telling yourself the truth is that you need to go back over the story and name everything sin that is sin. The whole story is filled with sin, from the beginning to the end. You’ve even got significant generational sin in spades. You need to call it what it is so that you can confess it and let God cleanse you from it. (1 Jn. 1:9). Without that, you are bound to repeat it over and over. Again, look over the story and notice the same things happening over and over again, from generation to generation. Nothing will ever change, if nothing changes. The change needs to begin with acknowledgement of sin all the way down to the bones.

The word for ‘confess’ in 1 John 1:9, means to say the same thing. Since you are confessing to God, you should say the same thing about your sin as God says about it. This includes actually naming it, taking full responsibility for it; without rationalizing, justifying, hiding, wiggling, passing the buck, or being vague or general. This process also includes an idea for telling God how you intend to stop sinning and begin living in a new and godly way. To confess sin, but then to continuing to live in it, isn’t really confession at all.

I would say that once you get the sin confessed, you should read Gospel of Luke. Mark each passage that impresses you, write a paragraph about the verses you marked and say why you were impressed by them. Then write a short paragraph about how Jesus is revealed in each chapter. Write another prayer asking God to transform you into someone like Jesus. Make the prayer specific to what Jesus is saying we should be, or what the text is revealing about who Jesus is.

Then, while you’re doing that, you should find a good church to get involved with. Then, get involved with it. Get to know the pastor and ask him to help you get to know a few older couples who can help you learn to be a godly woman.

Until you find a church (and after, if you want), you should continue listening to Pastor Wilson’s sermons. Take notes on the sermons, making special note of the point of the sermon, what you should do with the information given in the sermons, and a short prayer asking God to apply the sermons in your life.

Finally, This booklet has been very helpful to people over the years. I give them out to everyone. Jim Wilson is Pastor Wilson’s father.

Feel free to send the notes to me and  I’ll look them over for you and give you any input I think would be helpful.