Dear Church Family,

Each year I love seeing our different ministries reach out to our community. I had the privilege of sharing my testimony to the people who came to Loaves and Fishes to get food. Many of them will leave with more than just physical food. Our volunteers are amazing and show the love of Jesus. I ran across this devotional this week by Pastor Rich Bitterman and hope it will encourage you:

The fall happened fast.

One step off the gravel, and the edge of the path gave way beneath your foot. You weren’t sprinting. You weren’t even careless. You were just walking along, trying to get home before dark. Then it came…the jolt, the stumble, the splash.

The mud wrapped around your leg like shame wearing skin. Cold. Slick. Unwelcome.

You rose slowly, wiped your hands, looked around. No one saw.

But the Light saw.

And you saw what the Light saw.

And that’s what undid you.

You didn’t plan to sin today. You prayed this morning. You opened the Word. You were doing better.

But here you are again. Stuck in the very thing you thought you’d left behind.

Why?

Why, after all this time walking with Christ, do you still sin like this?

Why, when you’ve come so far, does it still feel like you’re crawling through the same dirt?

That question doesn’t rise from indifference. It rises from nearness.

You don’t see the mud when you’re far from the lamp. But get close to the light, and everything changes. The specks on your skin become blotches. The soil beneath your fingernails becomes unbearable. You wipe harder, but it only spreads.

People far from God think they’re clean. People near to Him know they aren’t.

That ache you feel in your chest, that slow, sick recognition that you’re still at war with the same sins, isn’t necessarily backsliding. It’s awakening.

You’re not growing colder. You’re standing under the lamp.

You’ve walked in darkness before. You remember those nights. The guilt didn’t bother you then. The conscience stayed quiet. You barely flinched.

But something changed.

You started hating the sin that used to thrill you.

And the hatred didn’t always come with victory. Sometimes it came with failure so bitter it made you question everything.

Here’s what no one told you: the war is the proof.

You feel the filth because the Light is on.

I read once of a village buried deep in the Ozark countryside. It had a single streetlamp. Just one. The road to that place was cracked, narrow, full of pits. But if you made it near the light, the mud on your clothes showed itself. All of it.

There are days when you feel the filth most clearly. The words you said. The thoughts that poisoned the quiet. The lie that slipped through your teeth. The pride that dressed itself in religious clothing.

You didn’t even see it as it was happening.

But the closer you walked to the streetlamp, the more it glared back at you from your reflection in the puddle.

You wonder what to do with this.

You say to yourself, “I’ll clean up. I’ll climb higher. I’ll be better.”

You stack a list of remedies.

Pray harder.

Read more.

Fast longer.

Serve better.

Repent deeper.

Then maybe, just maybe, you’ll climb high enough to be free.

But what if the blessings you’re chasing don’t wait at the peak?

What if they pool in the valley?

What if the fire of grace burns in the low place?

Years ago, I met a man who’d walked with Jesus longer than I’d been alive. I asked him how to grow. His eyes were tired and kind.

He said, “You want to go up. But God meets you going down.”

I didn’t understand at the time. I do now.

Jesus does not meet us in our successes. He meets us in our need.

You think you’ve failed. You think God’s waiting for you to climb out of your slump. But He came all the way down. He didn’t stretch out a ladder. He came into the pit.

He did not wait on the mountain. He was born in a barn.

He did not sit in the temple. He walked into the leper colonies.

He did not dine in palaces. He knelt in gardens, sweating blood into the dirt.

He does not wait for you to come up.

He finds you curled up in the valley.

So stop pretending.

You are a sinner. Say it.

Own the sin. Name it in prayer. Do not hide. Do not coat it in religious language. The Spirit is not allergic to honesty.

You think pretending will protect you, but all it does is starve you of help. The man who hides the infection keeps himself from the cure.

You do not impress God by dressing up your repentance.

Come raw.

Come muddy.

Come like a child who tripped in the street and stands on the porch, hoping for a hug instead of a rebuke.

You ask, “Should I stop trying?”

No.

But don’t treat the trying as the goal.

You are not saved by effort. You are saved by Christ.

And the One who saves you meets you where you have no strength left to walk.

Think of the body chilled from the cold. You don’t cure hypothermia by sprinting. You find a fire.

Sit near the heat.

Open the Word and not to earn favor, but to warm your soul.

Pray…not to perform, but to hear your Father’s voice again.

Listen…not for guilt, but for grace.

Stop counting the things you’ve failed to do, and look up.

Look at the One who took every last sin from your record and nailed it to wood.

You ask, “But shouldn’t I feel better by now?”

Sometimes.

But other times, you’ll feel worse before you feel clean.

That’s the nature of Light.

It doesn’t flatter.

It exposes. It burns. It bleaches. And then, slowly, it heals.

The Light is not ashamed of what it sees on you. He already knew.

And still He came.

He came knowing the filth.

He came knowing the fight.

He came knowing this would take your whole life.

And He said, “Mine.”

You’re not held by your devotion. You’re held by His scars.

You’re not clean because you’ve climbed.

You’re clean because the Light stooped low and washed you.

With His blood. With His righteousness. With His own tears.

So rise, weary one.

The fire still burns.

The Light still shines.

And when you see the dirt on your soul again tomorrow, do not look down.

Look into His face.

You will not find disgust.

You will not find distance.

You will find the eyes of a Savior who walked your muddy road, fell to His knees at Calvary, and now stands with arms open, calling you home.

Come. And keep coming.

The lamp is lit.

The valley is wide.

And grace is warm.

Mark