The Roar WithinEsimerkki

Day Five: Restoring My Roar 

 One day I was sitting with my friend Derek, who has also faithfully discipled me over the past decade—repeatedly walking with me through my own sin and pain and back to health. Derek and I met when I was at my absolute bottom. I was paraded in front of a congregation years ago for getting too close emotionally to a woman in the church while I was on the church staff. 

As a part of my “restoration” process, I was required to stand in front of twelve hundred people in three separate services and confess my sin before them. I stood there sobbing before the people I loved, feeling ashamed, isolated, and condemned. As you can imagine, I resigned shortly thereafter and spent the next several months curled up in the fetal position, wanting to die. 

When the opinions of others drive us to contemplate our own demise, we’re listening to the wrong voice. What I desperately needed were restorative voices speaking into me, those who could remind me of my identity in Christ, not my sin. But there were no such voices speaking to me. The message communicated to me through the withholding of relationship and restoration was that my sin disqualified me from love, compassion, and even ministry. 

After moving my family only a few months after my resignation, God led me to Derek. Instead of shaming, shunning, condemning, and judging, he talked to me about God’s grace and how my identity was in Christ, not in my sin. His words were different. They didn’t leave a nasty spiritual residue like performance-based religion did. They didn’t discard me as not good enough. They were redemptive, healing, freeing, and restorative. 

The message of the gospel is always transformative, and I began to truly understand where my “good enough” came from. The liberation of God’s grace created an overwhelming, unquenchable force inside of me to want to share His goodness and love. As a result, I’ve had the opportunity to use my story—my limp—to build stronger, healthier relationships and change lives through the message of love and grace instead of condemnation. I have seen over thirteen thousand people come to Christ in just the past decade. I now know that the dark mud I was dragged through, that Satan tried to use to cover up my core identity, never had any effect on who I really was—and it never will.

Is there a sin from your past that you believe you should feel shame and condemnation for? What does God’s Word say about that?