Exposed

The words of Derek Webb:

"We often believe...that the Christian life is about how well we can hide our sin. I do this all the time. We think that we can measure the growth of our spirituality by how little we are sinning, or at least how little we can convince everyone (ourselves included) that we are sinning.

But the Christian life is not about hiding. It's not about hiding in fear. But gosh, that's what we all do, though is it not. We just live in fear all the time that we'll be found out. I'm telling you, the best thing that could happen to anybody in this room, the best thing, is that your sin would be literally exposed on the 5:00 news. Your deepest, darkest, most embarassing sin. The one you work the hardest to hide would be broadcast on the 5:00 news. Best thing to happen to you. Best thing to happen to me.

Because I'm so tired, I am so weary, of hiding my sin from people. Of deceiving people about who I really am. I'm tired of it! I just wish my sins would be exposed, I wish there were huge screens that would just show you the truth about me, all the way down to my core. In order that you would know me for who I really was. In a way that I could not, I did not even have an option to hide from you anymore. In order that I would have nothing but Jesus to grasp onto. Because that's all I've got anyway.

'Cause the truth is, your sins have been exposed as if they were on the 5:00 news. They've been exposed to Jesus. He knows you better than you're even willing to admit to yourself. But He's forgiven you! Take joy in the fact, not that your sins are not real, but that they are real, and that your savior is real. I can't tell you this enough times, in hopes that one of you, any of us, even me, might believe this.

I'll never tire of saying this to people. I'll never tire of hearing it myself. Because, by the time I go to sleep tonight, I'm not going to believe it again. I'm going to be thinking of ways to hide my sin from people in hopes they may like me, or something.

But that's not what my Christian life's all about, that's not what sanctification's all about, that's not what growth as a believer is all about. It's about coming to grips with who you really are and being willing to admit that to each other. In order that that might happen in your community. That others might come and say, "you know I heard you talking about this sin, and that was bold of you, brave of you to admit that, you know what, it's kind of leading me to repent as well. I want to tell you something. I want to invite you into where I hide, in hopes that I won't hide there anymore, make it harder for me to hide there, because a light switch has been turned on."

Please, please, begin preaching the gospel to each other in a way that you might actually believe it, and in a way that you might come out of hiding, and that it might change our communities. I mean, am I the only one sick of living in American subculture Christianity where we encourage each other to hide, encourage each other to put on these faces? That is not what the Christian life is all about.

It's no wonder, statistically, our church is losing relevance by the day. It's no wonder we're so stagnant! We don't believe the Gospel. It has not failed us, we have just failed to believe it.

So I'm going to start with my own repentance."