Robert Sherman
I thank God that He still loves sinners like me, and provided a path through Jesus to find salvation and sanctuary from sin.
I had a secular upbringing, my parents told my sisters and I that we didn’t go to church because they wanted us to choose religion for ourselves. Despite no church, our house had Judeo-Christian foundations. We sang a blessing before dinner every night (O the LORD’s been good to me), went to church a few times to see my grandfather sing in the choir, and I spent 2 summers at ‘Jesus Camp’. Anyway by about high school I solidified my belief in God. The world is just too beautiful and miraculous, there must be a God.
While I believed in God, I did not do anything about it. I lived for myself and did alright for a while. But I had an irrational aversion to conflict and a tendency to lie. In college, a relationship with a nice, but incompatible girl took these flaws and turned them up to 11. Neither of us was fulfilled but we could not see that. After two years I ended up cheating. And then I lied. My time in college only got darker. The lie split myself in two. I kept up the lie for a year, not that I was convincing, but when the truth is hard denial is easy. It seemed like maintaining the lie was the ‘right thing to do’. But I couldn’t do the right thing. I drank to disconnect from my life. I didn’t think in these terms then, I was certainly a sinner. But I couldn’t do anything about it. I was too weak.
Eventually I told the truth. And while it helped, it didn’t solve the problem. This was always going to be a nasty part of me. I conceded that I could only live my future life with discipline and wait for the passage of time to make my past tolerable. I did not know there was anything else out there for a sinner like me.
After school, I met Kate, my fiancé. I wondered why God had let someone so good into my life after I had blown it before. She brought me to church. I went with her to find community and a structure for my faith.
As part of the NSYNC class, I realized there is something else for me at the church – Jesus and the salvation he offers. In class we reviewed the ways in which we try to deal with our sins: blaming others, doing good deeds, denial, and fatalism. To deal with the darkness from my college years, I had tried every single method, and felt no relief.
My time in church showed me that these were not my failings alone, everyone will fall short of God’s glory. And it was natural my methods to resolve my sin would fail. I needed to turn to Jesus. By the second or third class, I learned what Jesus’ forgiveness truly means. Before, I thought that He forgave us just because forgiveness is nice. Hearing the true meaning, “For the wages of sin is death”, but Jesus paid that debt with his own death on the cross and rose again 3 days later in victory over sin, so that we may see “the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). I did not have to carry the darkness from my college times and wait for it to fade from my mind (it won’t). I could receive true forgiveness. Once the truth was clear, I was certain that I needed to pray and embrace Jesus.
After praying with David, I felt in my heart that I started a new life, my real life. The burden of sin was not on my shoulders – I thank God that He still loves sinners like me, and provided a path through Jesus to find salvation and sanctuary from sin.
