Introspection: Signed, Sealed, and Delivered

I share these thoughts, hoping they are of help to someone else.


Signed, Sealed, and Delivered

Scripture:

It's in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free - signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what's coming, a reminder that we'll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.

Ephesians 1:13-14 (The Message)

I will stumble
I will fall down
But I will not be moved
I will make mistakes
I will face heartache
But I will not be moved

From "I Will Not Be Moved" by Natalie Grant

Not long ago, a fellow Sunday School teacher at my church asked me to deliver the lesson on a particular date. Having looked ahead in the Sunday School book, I asked if I could teach the lesson for the Sunday afterward. The lesson he asked me to teach was about giving of oneself, and I did not feel as though I was the best person to teach on that subject. Case in point, I find myself becoming irritable when people ask me to fix their computers for them. After sitting in front of a computer for nine hours at work, fixing computers is the last thing I want to do afterward. At the same time, I know that my attitude is wrong. I possess skills that others do not, and I know that I should use those skills to help people.

I am a man who has many faults, and probably a majority of those faults are related to my attitude. One fault is my tendency to be overly critical of myself. Recently, this caused me to go through a difficult time marked with discouragement and self-doubt. I felt as though I was constantly brought face-to-face with my own hypocrisy. I felt like my life consisted of one mistake after another. I had St. Paul's dilemma of doing what I should not do and not doing what I should do.¹ I just could not seem to escape from my faults, and I started becoming really sick of myself and my attitude.

Times like this become worse when someone feels the need to point out one of my faults to me. It overwhelms me because I am already pointing out my own faults to myself. When someone does decide to call me on one of my shortcomings, I usually have a dual reaction: part of me (wrongly) wants to beat myself up because the other person is probably right, while part of me (wrongly) wants to lash out at the other person for making me feel worse about myself. Of course, I know that being angry with the other person is also the wrong attitude to have, so further down the spiral I go.

And yet with all of these faults, I have the audacity to think that I am somehow called to proclaim God's message to people through my blog and through my Sunday School lessons. Sometimes I feel as though I should leave this duty to those who do a better job of practicing what they preach, to those who really live and act like Christians. One night a few months ago, I got into an argument and completely lost my cool. To make matters worse, I was supposed to teach Sunday School a few days later. Ashamed of myself, I asked my mother how I was supposed to teach after "losing my religion," so to speak. She replied, "The same way you always do."

I recently realized that I don't study the Bible enough for myself: most of my studies lately have been in group Bible studies or in preparation for my lessons. I have started reading the Letter to the Ephesians and recording my thoughts. One evening a few weeks ago, I sat down to read my Bible, though at the time I felt as though it was pretty much pointless since I would probably never change my ways. I am glad that I decided to go ahead and read, because God gave me exactly what I needed to read at the time. That evening, the following words caught my attention:
In Him [Christ] you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in Him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God's own people, to the praise of His glory.²

I may have a lot of faults, but God has a lot of grace.

A few years ago, I needed to get a form notarized. Fortunately, a friend of a friend was a notary public. When I met with her, she used a contraption to imprint a seal into the form. Similarly, ancient kings would use their signet rings to put seals on documents to make them official. In the Bible verses above, St. Paul compares the Holy Spirit to such a seal. He states that the presence of the Holy Spirit in a person's life shows that the person's redemption - forgiveness and reconciliation with God - is official.³

There are times when I don't do what I should do, and there are times when I do what I shouldn't do. There are even times when I lose my cool completely. Even so, God does not give up on me, even when I am tempted to give up on myself. Despite my faults, God's Spirit is still working in my heart to make me into the person I need to be, and God's Spirit is still working through me, providing me with messages to share with others. This "seal" in my life reminds me that my redemption is assured. God will deal with all of my faults in time and bring me closer to Him in the process.

If we trust in God, He will see us through tough times and help us to overcome our faults. God does not give up on us, so we must not give up on ourselves.


1 - Romans 7:14-15
2 - Ephesians 1:13-14 (NRSV)
3 - Wesley Study Bible: notes on Ephesians 1:3-14


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