When Cancelation is Good News

When Cancelation is Good News

      Flying is a necessary bane of my existence, but is something that has become a normal feature to my life.  The Lord in His humor had me fall in love with a Canadian woman who served the Lord in Uganda.  I didn't like flying to Florida, and if you haven't checked the map recently, Uganda is quite a bit further away.....and there is a huge ocean between the two continents.  I hated flying.  The thought of it terrified me, nearly gave me panic attacks.  But I loved Leslie.  I felt a huge part of my future had her in it.  The only way to make it work was to fly....and fly often.  Since then I've flown ten times to multiple countries.  I believe I have logged over 80,000 miles, the distance of flying around the world three times.  Flying still makes me nervous, but I've become more comfortable with the thought of it.  In my mind at least I have a woman who loves me dearly at the end of that journey, which makes it worth it.

      Recently the kids and I were scheduled to fly out to Canada to be with Leslie and the kids for three weeks.  I'm notorious for plane complications.  Let me give you a short run down.  I flew to Tanzania and they lost the luggage with my clothes.  I had to buy clothes from street vendors.  You should have seen the very whimsical swimming trunks that I wore.  One flight out of Uganda it's schedule five times in three days.  One of those times had me landing at a different airport then the one I flew out from, and I had a delay in Ethiopia that went from 1.5 hours to almost 20 hours.  Another time was when my plane got caught against the gate taxing out meaning we had to deboard and find a whole new flight.  Had an engine problem in Dallas, a delayed flight where I almost missed my connection in Texas.  Another major delay resulted in me almost missing my wedding rehearsal.  I'm not cursed, or at least that is what Leslie keeps telling me.  I'm basically a lightning rod for weird when it comes to travel.

      We were scheduled to take off at 9:30 AM, which meant leaving the house at 5 AM in order to make to the airport in time.  Not the greatest flight time out, but I've had much worse.  I woke up at around 2:30 to find that our flight have been delayed over three hours to an almost 1 PM departure.  That was disappointing because it meant less time to spend with Leslie, Phil, and Zoe.  It also meant having to drive through Seattle in rush hour traffic.  I did that one time and I swore that I would never do it again.  But, at least we were going to fly and be together.  It was getting closer to our boarding time and I noticed that there were no announcements nor activity at the gate.  I've traveled enough to know that spells trouble with a capital T.  The plane was there, the crew had already boarded, it was clean, fueled, and all the luggage loaded.  I scratched my head because I've dealt with flight delays over dozens of things, but this one didn't make sense at all.  Soon we saw a group of EMT's bring a stretcher onto the plane.  I knew then that we were in major trouble.  One of the crew members had a medical episode.  I felt terrible for her, but that meant there wasn't a enough of a crew to fly.  So, they delayed our flight again until 2 PM hoping to find another crew member.  They found a crew member flying from New York and then we would take off at 7:30 PM.  That was nearly 12 hours of delay, but again, at least we would take off and now I wouldn't have to worry about rush hour traffic.  I made phone calls, changed my rental car agreement, and frantically tried to be patient.  And then the notification came on my phone, the flight was canceled.  You could hear a collective groan come from the people.  They formed a line, started to complain, trying to reschedule their flights.  I joined the mob of people.  The airline said the best they could do was flying out Friday....four days past my original day.  That wasn't doable.  I booked onto a different airline at a different airport for a much higher amount of money.  I was frustrated, angry, felt cheated, robbed to be honest with you.  The airline was kind enough to give a minimal amount of money in food credit and a stay at a hotel near my next airport, but it just stunk.  

      Canceled flights are an absolute pain.  They give us a headache, drain us of our patience, and make us evaluate our sanity.  We don't like the word cancel.  We hate when our favorite TV show is canceled before we knew what happened, or a book series that wasn't renewed and we were left asking, what happened next, or when the concert we were supposed to attend was canceled due to weather.  Or when our doctor's office calls and says they need to reschedule our appointment, ugh.  

      But there is one cancelation of which I am so thankful for, the cancelation of my sins.  You might have stumbled on this and be asking 'what in the world do you mean canceled sins?'  Or 'what does canceled sin have to do with a blog dedicated to grief?' Let me rewind the story to quite a few years ago.  It was the summer of 2003.  I had just graduated, I was in a fairly serious relationship, I was heading to college to become a Tech Ed teacher.  Everything looked great....but it wasn't.  On the inside I was falling apart.  I had made some really poor choices and to be honest, some really poor friendship choices.  It wasn't like I was destined for death row, but my life was just a mess.  I was depressed, borderline suicidal at times.   I was trying to find fulfillment in anything.  The void was deep and it ached.  I knew my life wasn't a good one.  I grew up in a church.  Mind you that church didn't regularly preach the Gospel.  They told us about being good and religious, but there wasn't a very deep concept of salvation and having confidence in the finished work of Jesus.  Everyone in the church was 'hoping' to get to heaven, but most of them weren't certain.  They just didn't know if they did enough good things.  The scales had to be balanced in their mind, and it was their job to finish the work of their own salvation.  They felt that there must be some other good thing they can do in order to be free or to be absolved of their sin.  They frittered and toiled, but were missing the target entirely.  I was among that crowd for awhile.  I heard the God loved me and was all powerful, and yet I was frustrated because the message I heard was that God wasn't big enough to save me, but instead I needed to rescue myself or in some way help God get the job done.  I became disenfranchised with church and God.  All that glittered faded.  My sin nature was too big to overcome my teenage desires and yearnings.  I was trying to manage without God, and I was failing miserably. 

      Complicating matters was that I was angry and bitter at a God that I wasn't sure existed.  I was a closet agnostic.  I knew something was bigger than me, I just didn't think it cared or wanted to know me.  My deep seated bitterness came from two losses within a short season.  My grandmother who was instrumental in raising me passed away after a bout with cancer.  That was the first major death that I can remember.  Next was the tragic death of a friend of mine in high school.  He was younger then me.  Young people weren't supposed to die.  We were meant to be immortal, or so I thought.  Those two deaths caused me to examine my life, and instead of opening my eyes death blinded me.  Bitterness took deep root.  Ironically my work revolves around the dying and those suffering with grief.  But death at one time almost became the lock on my heart keeping me to have a relationship with God.

       I mentioned my long term relationship earlier.  She was my rock that kept me anchored.  She went to church.  I'm not sure if she had a relationship with Jesus or not, but she was more moral than me.  Every Saturday night she would invite me to church, and at that time I wanted nothing to do with church.  I felt like church was full of hypocrites and phonies.  But she pleaded with me to go.  It was quite annoying, but she was determined.  Finally in August of 2003 I told her that I would go to church, that I wasn't going to pay attention, and that I would never go again.  The next day I went to church.  I didn't shake hands, I didn't smile at anyone, I did not want to be there.  My only prayer that day was that church would be quick.  I sat in church, listened to music that made no sense to me, heard prayers that felt pointless, and didn't quite understand when I was supposed to sit down or stand up.  I looked like the unhappiest man in the world.  You could have driven a train on the scowl on my face.  The pastor came up and started to preach.  His message was simple, it was from John 3:16.  I remembered that passage from my past.  I used to wear a bracelet with it on my wrist.  I think I had a t-shirt that said the same thing, but it had no meaning to me.  But the pastor continued to preach that day about God's love for me.  How Christ came to rescue me from my sin.  How Christ's death, burial, and resurrection canceled my sin.  I'm not sure who else was in the church that day, but for me personally I felt like an audience of one.  The pastor preached not to a crowd, but to my weary teenage soul.  He didn't tell me what I wanted to hear, but what I needed to hear.  Every word felt like a chisel being taken to my stony heart.  The message wearied me in a good way.  He gave an invitation to trust Christ, and on that day I trusted Christ as my Savior, as the one who canceled my sin.

      Things changed from that day forward.  The Holy Spirit gave me a hunger for His Word, a burden for souls, a change of conviction, an upheaval of a previous lifestyle, the loss of longtime friendships, and soon a call to be a servant sharing the same message that freed me.  That's been 23 years ago.  Over that course of time I have been in pastoral ministry for 13 years, missions work for 4 years, director of a children's ministry for nearly 3 years, and now the founder of a grief ministry for men.  Next January I will celebrate 20 years of full time ministry.  But it's deeper than ministry.  I had the joy of falling in love with my best friend Tiffanie.  Having three beautiful children together.  The bitter loss of her passing away at the age of 37.  The rebirth of life in the midst of grief by meeting Leslie and her children.  Getting remarried, preparing to move, and reaching me in the valley of the shadow of death.  All of that came about because Christ canceled my sin.

      How did Jesus do this you might ask?  Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God left the glories of heaven to come to this world and to take away our sin (John 1:29).  He was the Son of God, 100% God and 100% man.  He lived a sinless, perfect life.  He was born with the destiny to die for the sins of the world.  Sin being anything that we think, say, or do that does not please God.  The Bible says we are all sinners (Romans 3:23).  We might sin in different sizes, shapes, and number, but sin keeps us far from God (Romans 6:23).  We are unable to do anything to save ourselves (Titus 3:5, Ephesians 2:8).  Church, charity, religion, prayer, etc cannot take away one sin.  People that pursue morality are still lost, because they haven't found the way.  So, we are broken in our sin, unable to save ourselves, so what are we to do?  It wasn't ever about what we can do, but about what is already done.  Jesus, the lamb without blemish, went to an old rugged cross.  He was nailed to the cross, He shed His blood (Hebrews 9:22), and agonized in obedience to His Father and for the redemption of our souls from sin.  Jesus on the cross said seven different things.  One of them is in John 19:30.  Jesus said "It is finished."  The Greek word here is a financial term which means to cancel a debt, or to pay the price in full.  It would be a word written on a piece of pottery provided to someone when their debt was paid in full providing evidence that the debt was indeed canceled/paid.  Jesus, on the cross, declared our sin debt canceled...the price was paid in full.  Paul mentions this bedrock of our faith in Colossians 2:14, which says "He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross."  The Greek word for cancel here literally means to wipe away or to obliterate!  That's a powerful image!!!  Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8).  He was born for the purpose of dying.  Unless we put faith in Him then we remain in our sin....and we remain lost.

     Charles Wesley wrote a hymn called "O' For a Thousand Tongues to Sing."  In one of the stanzas he famously wrote "He breaks the power of canceled sin, He sets the prisoner free, His blood can make the foulest clean; His blood availed for me."  The power of canceled sin has been broken through Jesus.  Not by me being religious, moral, ethical, 'good', generous, etc.....but through Jesus alone.  Christ alone is my hope of heaven.  I have no good works or efforts that I can stand on.  But I want to provide one last detail as I wind down this particular article.  The cancelation of my sins and the peace of being forgiven through Jesus was the lone thing that held me together in the deepest, darkest recesses of my grief.  It was the proverbial net that caught me again and again.  I was declared His child and He would not abandon nor fail His own.  Little did I know that when I trusted Jesus 23 years ago that I would endure the most tragic loss of my life.  And little did I know that the lone thing that would hold me together would be that same decision I made.  This page is dedicated to grief, but grief cannot be the final word in our life.  Grief needs a safe harbor to sail into, and the harbor is Christ alone.