Author: Bekah Mason

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The Sins of Our Youth


Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O God! Psalm 25:7

This was the daily verse that appeared in my Twitter feed this morning. Thinking on some things I knew were coming up today, I was reflecting on the past a bit, and I was in a regretful frame of mind. My knee-jerk reaction to reading it was, “‘Remember not the sins of my youth.’ That must be nice. I can’t seem to get away from them.” Not exactly a heart of thankfulness to a loving and forgiving God, but I’ll blame it on the fact that I hadn’t had my coffee yet, and being awake definitely helps my spiritual well-being.

There are times in which it would be nice to be able to forget the sins of our youth. Some choices we make really do stay with us for a lifetime, even when we want to shake them off, be free from them and literally move on. But what we must remember is that Christ, by remembering not our sins, does allow us to move on. Those choices cannot be changed, and the consequences remain, but there is freedom from the condemnation of those sins. The word remember here isn’t the opposite of “forget” but means “don’t hold it against me”. The psalmist is saying, “I’m not that person anymore, please don’t hold my past over my head anymore.” And he makes a case to God for why God should not hold his sin against him.

First, the psalmist says that God’s love is everlasting. A loving God forgives sins, never to bring them up again. “Love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). Isaiah says that in God’s love he took our sins upon His back, delivering us from a pit of destriction (Is. 38:17). Love doesn’t throw us back in the pit.

Second, the psalmist tells God that no longer holding our sin against us is for the sake of His goodness. How is forgiving our sin good for God? One way is that it enables us to join Him in His work. Now, does God really need us to do His work? No, but in His plan, He asks us to join Him in His Kingdom work. Makes sense to me; work is always easier when you’re doing it with people you love. But what the psalmist is saying is that, when our sins are forgiven and we are able to stand up from underneath their oppressive load, we can then take upon ourselves His easy load of service for the Kingdom. We can’t carry our sin and His Kingdom simultaneously. When we allow Him to take the sin, and the accompanying secrecy, shame, guilt, condemnation, it frees us up to serve Him like He has called us to serve Him.

A prime example of this is found in the life of Peter. I relate more to Peter than to any other person in Scripture, and he is a great testimony of being set free from the sins of his youth for the ultimate goodness of God. In Luke 22, Jesus tells Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat,  but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

Jesus knows that Peter is about to fail Him miserably. He says, “I’m praying that you won’t. But when you do…” Have you ever had a conversation with someone like that? Has anyone had that conversation with you? “I’m warning you. I know where this is headed, and it’s going to be bad. I don’t want you to, but I know you’re going to anyway.” That’s pretty much what Jesus tells Peter.

But He adds something to the end of the statement. He adds hope and purpose to the failure. He tells Peter, “And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

So why does God forget our sins but not allow us to? One reason is because we can’t use past failure to connect with and strengthen others if we act as if it never happened. God trades in our beauty for ashes, He restores the years the locusts have eaten (Joel 2:25), and He works all things together for our good and for His glory (Romans 8:28). And for Him to be able to make the worst decisions of our life beneficial, they must be exposed to the light and applied to the lives of others.

My ashes couldn’t have been traded for beauty if there hadn’t been people who had previously been sifted by Satan like wheat and then obediently strengthened this sister. Same goes for me. When I want to forget my times of sifting and “move on” with life, I remember that those times are a waste if they are not used to strengthen those behind me who are still spinning from their own sifting.

So I am thankful that God remembers not the sins of my youth. But today I am equally thankful that He makes sure I never forget them.

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Amy Winehouse and the Deification of Celebrities


Like so many others in the blogosphere and in Twitterverse, I was saddened over the weekend by the death of music artist Amy Winehouse. She had tremendous talent, but also tremendous scars and pain that she simply could not seem to escape in this life.

I am saddened by the loss, but I am not shocked, as so many proclaimed to be. Her struggle with addiction and her refusal to humbly submit to admitting a weakness, her many failed attempts at rehab, her public meltdowns and relational explosions have been well documented the last few years. It has been painful to watch a human life spiral into destruction through the lenses of the paparazzi. An honest social commentary entitled “Amy Winehouse Dies, Before Our Eyes” was published by Gazelle Emami on Huffington Post on Saturday; it’s a good read for anyone who is concerned about the ever-present self-destructing celebrity.

This is not the first time that society seems to have been shocked by a celebrity succumbing to a human ailment. Shock and dismay were proclaimed in the streets when Michael Jackson died two summers ago. Some simply could not believe that Patrick Swayze could have fallen victim to cancer in September of 2009. But since the advent of movie and television, celebrities have taken on a form of immortality that is rocked at each unexpected death. Look at the impact on American society of the deaths of celebrities like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe.

To believe that celebrities should be somehow immune to the natural consequences of living in a fallen world show that they have become functional gods. To be dismayed that they are “merely human” indicates that, deep down, we believe them to be something more.

Why do we place celebrities in the entertainment world on a deified pedestal? Is it that they possess fame and fortune that we really do desire to be our own? Are they the ones we worship, or does it eventually all go back to self-worship; we worship what we desire for ourselves?

Matt Maher has a song entitled “Flesh and Bone” and in it the chorus states, “I’m dying to believe/ I’m trying just to show/ That we are less than perfect/ More than flesh and bone”.

It is written on the human heart that we are in fact more than mere flesh and bone; we are created in the image of the God of the Universe, the only thing in all of creation for which God felt it necessary to get His hands dirty and then breathe life into us. But just like we are told in Romans 1 that certain things are written on the heart of man as universal Truth, we also have exchanged the Truth for the lie; that the created one can be worshiped instead of the Creator. And the unusual amount of sorrow displayed over the deaths of people we don’t know, people who just happen to have careers that place them in the limelight, display both of these truths perfectly.

We know there is something inherently special about humanity. And we choose to worship the creation rather than the Creator.

So should we as believers approach tragedies like the death of Amy Winehouse? How does one address grief over a life lost too soon while still keeping a check on one’s own heart and focus of worship? Can such tragedies open the door to healthy discussion with the body of Christ concerning the worship of celebrity?

Some questions are difficult to answer, but one thing is for certain, the life and death of Amy Winehouse is a painful real life lesson that choices can have disastrous natural consequences when we choose to worship creation over Creator.

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Myth of the Mean Girl: Living without Masks


I recently had a couple of conversations with a man about relationships between women. In one conversation he talked about his young daughter and her best friend and their love/hate relationship with one another, and in the other he mentioned the ever complex friendships between his wife and her friends. In both conversations he eventually ended his observations with a hopeless sounding statement of, “But you know, girls will be girls.”

He was talking about women hurting one another other with words and actions, about spending unhealthy amounts of time together until we blow up at one another, about betrayal and competition and unforgiveness. He’s bought into the myth of the Mean Girl. Our culture is built upon the idea that women are “Bridezillas” and “Real Housewives”, that we are “Gossip Girls” and “16 and Pregnant”, or that we are participants on “The Bachelor”, competing with one another for the attention and affection of a man. Young girls today watch tv and are taught to treat one another as competition at best and mortal enemies at worst. Girls believe this is how women are to behave, and so that is how they behave.

I used to believe the myth, too. Even in the church, all I had really seen was gossipy competition and hurt feelings, with excuses ranging from hormones to home life, but never hearing that there was another option for how women could behave.

But then I spent some time in a little town called Wake Forest (my parents kindly refer to it as the “seminary bubble”), surrounded by people who, for the most part, were genuinely pursuing Christ and desperately seeking to serve Him and be conformed to His image. There, I found a group of women who were more interested in pleasing God than pleasing one another, who were seeking Christ more than a husband, and who desired to learn from one another more than they desired to prove they were better than everyone else.

Does that mean we were without drama? Of course not! I distinctly remember one tear-filled confrontation between myself and two friends that ended in my throwing a pencil at one of them. I cried on a professor when she compared me to another student and I defiantly declared that I was NOT that person and then intentionally completed a project the way I wanted to, just to drive the point home. We had hopeless crushes on indecisive men and sometimes responded to the corresponding broken hearts with a frustrated “I told you so”. I was jealous when I friend was chosen for a position over me, and had many snarky conversations about “those girls”; the cute, and therefore shallow, ones that we were convinced were not “serious students” like us because they only came to seminary to land a husband. Sometimes, girls will be girls.

But there was a distinct difference in that time of life compared to previous times, and I have tried to carry it with me since I left that precious circle of friends. The difference is that, when we walked in the flesh and hurt one another’s feelings, we didn’t just move on with life, piling offense upon offense. We faced the moment and faced it together. We sought the wisdom of Scripture, we confessed our sins and shortcomings, we asked for forgiveness, we prayed together. Then we worked to walk together in the Spirit. We studied the Word together. We confronted weaknesses in our friends’ lives before they became strongholds of sin. We opened ourselves up to humble and transparent examination and offered the same to one another.We lived for a season without masks, and it was life changing. No one had it all together, and no one expected anyone else to have it all together. In fact, we called you out on it if you started acting like you did!

In short, we lived lives of discipleship together. We desired to be more like Christ and we expected our friends to help us along in that journey, not hold us back from our goal. The Christian walk is the only race in which every person who crosses the finish line is a “winner” and in turn, makes every other finisher that much more victorious. We are “more than conquerors” because we are not competing against our fellow runners; we’re all on the same team!

So will girls be girls? Yes, as long as we believe the lie of the world that we are competition for one another and as long as we hold one another back, pursuing goals of our flesh and our pride, devouring one another with our words and deeds. But if we will commit to humble discipleship, to encouraging one another, if we will transparently walk alongside one another and bear one another’s burdens as teammates and not enemies, then the type of girls we become will be more like Christ and not like the world.

Women don’t have to “be girls”. We can be like Jesus.

How have you fought to overcome the “myth of the mean girls”? How does your circle of friends lift one another up instead of tearing one another down? Can women walk in the Spirit together, in grace and Truth, or will girls be girls?

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Encouraging the Weak, Boot Camp Bill Part 2


And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. 1 Thessalonians 5:14

My friend Tiffany strongly urged me a couple of weeks ago to join her at Boot Camp Challenge. She claims it’s just because she didn’t want to go by herself, which I’m sure is partly true. But she also knows that I’ve been looking for something to do to kick start my “get back in shape” mission and she knew I was up to the challenge even though I wasn’t sure myself.

That is admonishing the idle.

Boot Camp Bill likes me. He told me this morning. Do you know why? He says he likes me because I have focus. I told him that I have to focus when I do the crazy stuff he asks me to do or I would hurt myself. “My right side is weak,” I told him. “I’ve had more knee surgeries than I have knees. I know to focus on technique and build up weight as I go. I’m just not steady on my right side yet.”

“YET!” he bellowed. “That’s the key word: YET! You’re focused, you have a goal and you’re gonna get there!”

That, my friends, is encouraging the fainthearted.

On Saturday, Boot Camp Bill also helped me do these ridiculous ab exercises that I won’t even begin to explain because, he says, we need to train my muscles to know they can do it before they’ll start doing it on their own. Today, I did them on my own.

That is helping the weak.

My first week I couldn’t do the side-to-side ab workouts on that dreaded Bosu ball because my balance was so bad and my core was so weak. Boot Camp Bill let me keep my heels on the ground instead of up in the air that first week because I had a goal to get my feet in the air this week. Guess where my feet were on Monday? That’s right. They were off the ground. Most of the time at least.

And that is being patient with all.

There’s a reason that Scripture is full of athletic illustrations when discussing out spiritual lives. We are the body of Christ, and our spiritual life requires daily upkeep and nutrition and challenge, just like our physical life.

So if you are one who is spiritually healthy, teaching those who are idle, weak, and fainthearted, continue encouraging them! Praise the small victories. Help them set realistic goals. Teach them technique concerning spiritual devotion and then challenge them to go deeper as the simple things get easier.

And if you’re the beginner (or the beginning again-er), take heart and persevere! Do not let early set backs get you down. Don’t give up if you don’t do something the “right way” the first time. Don’t focus on being a mighty prayer warrior; just focus on talking to God daily. Don’t aim for five hours of Bible study each day in the original languages; just subscribe to a daily devotional and read the entire chapter the devotional verses come from. Start small, work on technique and challenge yourself to go deeper as that the things of Christ begin to feed your soul.

What about you? How you begin again when you’ve taken time away from spiritual health? How do you encourage those around you in their spiritual walks?

 

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Do You Know the Author?


Oh, continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your righteousness to the upright of heart! Psalm 36:10

I love reading books and articles by people I know personally.

While any good book is worth reading, the experience is more enjoyable when I know the author because I can see little bits of them in their writing.

I discovered this in seminary when most of my professors had books that they had penned on the required reading lists for their classes. As the semester would progress and I got to know the professor better, I would catch myself reading with their voice and inflection in my head; almost my own personal book on CD. I still get tickled reading portions of Dr. Danny Akin’s books and articles and sermon manuscripts because I can tell when he was writing in a particularly passionate way and I can imagine him up on his tip-toes, leaning over the pulpit, preaching away on whatever point he happens to be making in print at the time. Dr. David Jones was my Sunday School teacher at Wake Cross Roads Baptist when I lived in Wake Forest, and when I am reading any of his works, I can imagine my Sunday school teacher right there in my office, explaining with stick figures on a dry erase board whatever mind boggling ethical point he is making in the book or article. Knowing the author and how much of his time, effort, passion and knowledge– how much of himself– went into the project makes me appreciate it even more.

It continues today. I love reading the blogs of friends and when I am researching something for my own writing, I tend to start with the writings of people I know and respect. Because I know them outside of their writing, I have a better context for what they are expressing in their work and it helps me understand it better.

For example, I don’t usually use the commentary provided with the Sunday School material at church (Shhh… don’t tell), but this quarter, Dr. Allan Moseley wrote the commentary on our study of Jeremiah and Lamentations. Dr. Moseley was the Dean of Students when I worked in the Student Life office at Southeastern, and I have heard him preach and speak on numerous occasions. Because I know him, I wanted to read what he had to say about the lessons I am teaching in my class. It’s not that I don’t trust other people who write the commentaries provided; there’s just extra incentive for me because I care about what he has to say simply because I know him.

Same principle applies to fiction. My friend Greg Wilkey recently published an e-book through Barnes and Noble. Greg was my department head when I taught at an area school, he and his wife attended our church for a time and I have been friends with his sister-in-law for several years. This character and book series are his passion, and to see it in print and be able to read it has been a joy for me because I know how much he loves it and how hard he has worked at it. It has been even more fun because, as I read, I am able to see those bits of his heart and soul in the characters in the story; the average reader would simply miss that level because they don’t know Greg. Those who know him much better than I do would probably tell you they love the book even more than I do because they love and know Greg more than I do.

Point being is this: there is a deeper meaning and understanding to any work of art (especially writing) when you know the writer.

The same principle applies to the Bible. The more you know and love God, the more you see Him in His writing, then the more you appreciate the deeper meaning and subtle references to Himself that mark the Word from Genesis to Revelation.

Here’s where most people trip up when reading the Bible– they read it for historical value or as an instruction manual or self-help book. While there are certain components of each of those genres of writing in the Bible, it is, more than anything else, an autobiography. It is God’s story of Himself to, for and concerning His people.

If you read the Bible and don’t understand it, or you think it’s boring, try reading it first as God’s autobiography. Approach it with the attitude of wanting to first learn all you can about the Author. You will find Him in every story, every law (even the weird ones like the ones about mold removal and sleeping with your clothes on), every piece of instructive teaching, every prophecy. Read it through the filter of this question: What can I learn about God? Get to know the Author. Learn about how much He loves His readers. Learn about the heart behind the writing of the book. Find out about God’s passion and it will become your passion. The more you know the Author, the more you will appreciate His Writing.

The catch with the Bible is that, because it’s first and foremost an autobiography, you have to read it to get to know the author. So read it, even if you don’t always understand it. Read it and compare it to the “writing” God has done in Creation. Read it and ask other people you know about it. If Oprah can start a world wide book club, surely you can ask a friend what they think about the Book you’re reading.

But before you write it off as history or myth or boring or impossible to understand, make sure you know the Author, because sometimes, knowing the author makes all the difference in your reading experience.