Gameboys and Gunk

When I was a kid, my parents gave me a rule.  I had a Gameboy color, and I loved that thing...specifically, whatever the new Pokemon game was (probably yellow version...classic).  But, the rule was this:  I could play at home if my homework was done, but I was not allowed to take my gameboy on the school bus with me and play on the ride to and from school.  They were clear that there needed to be priorities, and that on the ride to school, that was school time.  It wasn't a time for video games, it was a time for school.

Well...I nodded and smiled like any good 5th grader..."oh of course, Mom and Dad.  I won't take it on the bus."  In the back of my mind...I knew what I was gonna do.  I was gonna sneak that sucker into my backpack and pull it out once I was on the bus, and I was gonna try to beat that next gym leader, gosh darnit...and no stupid rule from my parents was gonna stop me.  Plus, I was so sneaky and crafty that there was no way I would be caught!  No...I was wayyy too good for that too happen.  I could do whatever I wanted, and my parents would never know.

One day, I had a bottle of hair gel in my backpack for some reason, and like any 5th grader, I completely forgot it was in there with how I treated my bag, throwing it around like there wasn't anything in there.  Well, the bottle of gel exploded, leaving nasty, goopy hair gel all over the inside of my bag.  It wasn't until I got home in the living room that I realized my mistake.  Gel was now coating my binders and notebooks, and I needed to get them out and clean them off.  I asked my dad to come and help me with this, and we began slowly pulling out the items that were covered in gel.  First, the binder.  Then, the notebook and the planner and agenda.  Then, my dad's hand reached further in the bag.  It was exactly at that moment that I had forgotten about my "brilliant" plan, thinking I could do what I wanted and hide the truth from my parents.  Instinctively, I tried to reach into the bag before he could, one last attempt at hiding the truth from my dad that I had been playing my Gameboy on the bus...but it was too late.  His hand was already in the bag, and he slowly pulled the Gameboy, half-covered in goopy hair gel, out of the bag.

My heart immediately sunk.  I was busted.  I was SO busted.  I mean, I was really, really busted.  I had asked my dad to help me clean out my bag, with hair gel covering all of my school materials, and he stuck his hand in there deeper than I thought he would, and pulled out what I thought I could hide from him.  And I was in big, big trouble.

I felt terrible.  Well, to be honest, I kind of only felt terrible because I got caught, and there were going to be consequences.  I was going to be grounded, and I wasn't going to be able to have fun like all of my friends.  But, I also felt terrible because I had been hiding something from my parents, and once it was unveiled, I felt foolish.  Hiding things from my parents always seemed like a good idea at the time, but it never ended well...and this was no exception.  I even just felt bad because I had disobeyed my parents.  They had set a rule and expected something of me, and I had let them down.  I did what was wrong, and my conscious was ringing loud in my ear.

I was most definitely punished that day.  There were consequences.  The Gameboy was taken away, and I was grounded.  (I can't remember how long for, but I do remember that it was long enough for me to remember I shouldn't do that again).  And yet, my dad didn't just yell and scream at me in anger and punish me that way.  He most definitely did discipline me, but in it he explained to me why what I did was wrong, and why I couldn't do it again.  There were consequences, but he didn't set those consequences out of his anger at my rebellion, but rather out of his love for me.

Now, when I look back on this event 10 years ago, I know why they set that as a rule.  I understand why it was forbidden, and why I should not have done it.  I understand why my dad was disappointed in me, and why he punished me.  You see, my dad loved (and still loves) me, and he wanted me to learn a few lessons...that I could not disobey my parents' rules, that I could not try to hide things from them, and that I could not lie to them.  Out of love, I was punished...and it wasn't fun.  In fact, it really sucked.  But I grew from that, and I did learn my lesson.  Not to say I never hid anything from my parents again, nor that from then on I did exactly as they told me...but, to this day, that moment of being caught with the gel-covered Gameboy has stuck with me.
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So many times, we try to hide things from God.  We follow most of the rules, but there are one, two, or maybe even a few specific things that we just flat-out rebel against.  We know it's wrong, but we do it anyways.  We think that we can hide it in the deepest parts of our hearts where it won't be seen by anyone else, including God.  As long as we are good on the surface, and as long as we are nice little Christians for the rest of the time, we'll be alright.

Well, because we're not perfect, there's some gunk that ends up in our lives, even on the surface.  In our hearts, we have this nasty goop.  We're often not aware of it, mindlessly going around doing whatever, until maybe we get to church and hear a sermon, or read scripture, or hear a song, or through some sort of conviction and realization that there is some gunk in our hearts that is covering everything else in there.  Even the good things in our heart are partly covered by the gunk.  At first, we'll try to clean it ourselves...but we just can't do it on our own.

So, we call out to God, and we ask him to help us clean out the gunk.  He reaches into our hearts, grabbing our love for our friends, and he helps us remove the gunk of our desire to be popular and "cool" among everyone we meet.  He reaches a little deeper, and finds the gifts he's given us that we can share with everyone around us, and he helps us remove the gunk of our pride, thinking that it's our gifts that we can use for our glory.

And then, he starts to reach deeper into our hearts.  All the sudden, we realize where God's going, and we panic.  We try one last time, one last frantic effort, to hide our deepest, darkest secret, the one we've been trying to hide from God and from everyone else around us.  But, it's too late.  God reaches his hands deep into our hearts, and he pulls out our flat-out rebellion, and he holds it up into the light in front of us.

Now, we know we're done.  We're at the lowest of the low, as our deepest, darkest secrets, half covered in gunk no less, are in God's hands, held out in front of us.  We're able to see these dark parts of our hearts clearly now, and we feel remorse.  First, we feel bad, because we know there will be consequences.  But, the conviction comes when we realize that we've been trying to hide something from our Heavenly Father who loves us beyond our understanding.  We realize that we have been blatantly rebelling against God's commands, thinking we could do whatever we want...but, now we see the Almighty God, the One with the power beyond nature's worst catastrophes, catching us red-handed...and in our fear of him, we realize how foolish we really are.

There are consequences.  But, in our broken state, in our moment of shame and guilt, God picks us up out of love.  He's disappointed in what we have done, but he still loves us more than we could ever comprehend.  He doesn't want us to feel shame, but instead to be convicted to change.  He explains to us why what we have done is wrong, and why we must change.  Out of his love for us, we are disciplined.  But, from the consequences, we learn a lesson, and we learn why we must turn away from whatever this sin is in our lives.

As time passes, if we are fortunate enough, we even learn why God commanded it in the first place, and why God wanted us to stay away from whatever it was.  God wants us to be free from all slavery, and so he gives us commands to live by.  Yet, we continually disregard these commands, thinking we can do as we please.  We think we can hide it from him, storing it in the deepest part of our hearts.  We still try to live as sons and daughters of God, and we ask for forgiveness for all of the other things we continually mess up.  We ask him to clean out our hearts, thinking of the gunk that rests in the surface.

But, our God reaches in deeper.  He goes to the core, to the inmost parts of our hearts, where we keep our junk...because it's there, in the deepest part, that he truly wants to clean...even if it means creating our worst fear, of our darkest secrets being out in the open.  And he does this out of his love for us, a love that nothing (NOTHING!!!) can separate us from (Rom. 8:38-39).
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Ask God to remove the gunk in your life.  He'll do that, and then he'll reach deeper...and it'll hurt.  But, his love is greater than anything else, and through the pain comes a true freedom that nothing or no one else can provide.

Psalm 51:1-12 (NIV, v6 Amplified Bible)

¹ Have mercy on me, O God,
   according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
   blot out my transgressions.
² Wash away all my iniquity
   and cleanse me from my sin.

³ For I know my transgressions,
   and my sin is always before me.
⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned
   and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
   and justified when you judge.
⁵ Surely I was sinful at birth,
   sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
⁶ Yet you desire truth in the inner being; 

   make me therefore to know wisdom in my inmost heart.

⁷ Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
   wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
⁸ Let me hear joy and gladness;
   let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
⁹ Hide your face from my sins
   and blot out all my iniquity.

¹⁰ Create in me a pure heart, O God,
   and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
¹¹ Do not cast me from your presence
   or take your Holy Spirit from me.
¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation
   and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

-Tom