Do you not know what is true of you in Christ?

The shards of a broken life fell on me cutting me and causing me to bleed. She sat easily in front of me as if to not hide a thing, gripped the sides of the chair as if to hold on for her life, and she truly did not hide a thing. All of it open bare and out. She took bricks off of her back one by one. Heavy tears flowed for each heavy chapter.

A sister in Christ’s life story has touched me and I will never be the same again. Her sin and life shattering consequences coupled with the desire for transformation and redemption. The unbelief that one’s self is capable of such atrocities and coming to grips with the fact that one’s self truly is. The healing. The making of all things new. All of these things move in me to want to remember this story.

I want to be cut by this. Perhaps it will change me. Even if I scar I want to be changed by her story and her tears over it. By her unbelief that she lived it and her desire for heaven. By her hope for more transformation and her hope for something new. Perhaps this is why I write. To carve life stories deeper into my soul so that I will be scarred to never be the same again…in a good way.

My friend who feels lost is so much farther along than she realizes. A brokenness and unbelief at what we are capable of and of what we actually do is the first step towards spiritual health. Many of us don’t realize it at all…ever. My name is Amy Jung and I am a sinner.  The first step towards health. Yet at the same time. I want to publically declare that, as a believer in Christ,  I am also counted as one of the saints. According to Sinclair Ferguson, “so much of the New Testament’s response to pastoral and personal problems in the early church was, “Do you not know what is true of you in Christ?’”

We are made new and clean by the blood of Christ and I remind my friend of this.  I say, while striving to believe it myself, “There is now no longer any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If anyone is in Christ He is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come”(2 Corinthians 5:17).

That is what this blog is about. It is about the new grace we live in as people in Christ. What it means to be in Christ. It is about the fact that our God of the bible is a God who is passionate about redeeming all things for His glory. He is making all things new by his grace. Not just a new heavens and new earth someday. But He is doing that every day here and now on this planet in our lives. And these are some of my daily glimpses into that as a wife and mother.

My life was once like a wasteland.  In chapter two of his letter to the Ephesians, Paul tells them that before they were in Christ, they were without hope and without God in the world.  He goes on to say that, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”  I can’t leave out his earlier statements in chapter two,  “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,  in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.  All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.  But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,  made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions —it is by grace you have been saved.  And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

The world including all people is God’s beautiful creation. But there was an aspect of my life before knowing and believing in Christ that was like wandering through a wasteland.  Life before walking with Christ.  Without hope and without God in the world.  Dead in my transgressions.  The world is lovely yet also quite scary and sin-sick.  And though I am in Christ now, I forget truths.  I am learning to live out the truth that I am in Christ.  I believe this is our life-long task as Christians (and it will take that long)…to learn to live according to who we are in Christ (rather than living from the flesh).

I write to remind myself of things that I forget everyday.  I do have that dreaded “spiritual amnesia” and I need to read once again that Christ is renewing me, my life story, the people around me and even the world. He is transforming it all from a wasteland to graceland.

My friend and I talk about these things.  She knows these things yet she cries as if she has never heard them before. I do too. I am reminded of our need to be reminded.

I pray for help to remember these truths…for her…and for me.

Photo taken from Google search. No artist named.