Open Letter: Dear Sis

Open Letter to my sis and to girls everywhere enslaved to sin, the lusts of their flesh and worldliness.

Dear Sis,

I know you’ve heard the religious talk. You’ve heard how “Jesus died for you.” For a time, you tried to follow the 10 commandments and say all the right words, so you could be God’s girl, yet it just wasn’t enough. You soon fell away, feeling angry and discouraged. Forget all this striving and consider a new perspective that has nothing to do with your own works. I know you’re confused, you’re hurting, and you can’t seem to be good enough for God. You look around and see that you’ve done things you never even dreamed you were capable of… In your quest of desperation, you did anything to feel something, yet in the end you are left emptier than when you first started.

You’ve spiraled down deep into a seemingly endless cycle of darkness and pain. The drugs numbed the pain, but only temporarily; allowing reality to strike back with a vengeance as soon as the high wore off, keeping you enslaved to its terrible appetite for your soul.

You turned to human love, at first hoping to find The One. He didn’t love you. He broke your heart. In fact, none of them loved you. They simply used you for a moment of pleasure, then forgot about you as soon as the next pretty face walked by. To deal with this you shut your emotions off, also becoming enslaved to your own one-sided lusts. Forgetting about the person on the other side and believing that sex and your own pleasure was worth living for, you lost all control of your inhibitions and became truly dead inside. Only God knows the precious life that may have been created and destroyed in those acts, sometimes outside of your own control. I know this caused overpowering feelings of guilt, anger and shame.

As if all this wasn’t enough, you were seduced by alcohol’s treacherous lure and ran to it. You were promised distraction and fun for the moment, but we all know what happens the next morning. None if it is fun or distracting.

Sister, nothing of this world will be able to numb your pain. Nothing can distract you from eventually facing reality. Everything you’re seeking after is not found here in the things of this earth. Don’t be fooled by false promises! 1 John 2:17 says “The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.” There is still hope!

You need to know that all these things you’ve done don’t make you unforgivable or unlovable! You’re not any more or any less of a sinner in God’s eyes than even the most “righteous” type of people? “All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God,” says Romans 3:23. Even just one sin committed by the smallest, most unknown person is still just as guilty in God’s eyes as the great dictators like Hitler and Stalin. This is great news for you! This is great news for me!

I know we have lived many years in confusion, looking at God’s commandments as nothing more than a list of rules to follow in order to be considered a Christian. I know it seemed like you needed to convince others of your Christianity by keeping these rules and doing all the right things. I know you hoped to even convince yourself in the process. Sister you must understand this point: We humans do not even have the ability to be Christians! It’s a shame that so many Christians expect perfection from others because in our natural state, the fleshly nature enslaves us to sin. We have no power to resist. Can you feel this enslavement in your own life?

What then is the solution? God knows that we cannot follow his laws. In fact, he gave the laws to show us our hopeless, sin-enslaved state of existence. Galatians 3:24 in fact shows us this: “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.” You see, we are not left to be trapped in an endless cycle of misery and crime. God did something that has set mankind free from this cycle! (This includes you!) He did this while we were still stuck in the middle of our sinful lifestyles, drowning in our sins. We did nothing to earn this and we did not cause him to do this. The first half of Titus 3:5 says “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy…”

God himself came down in the form of a man- the person of Jesus Christ- and took upon himself all the sinful and terrible things we’ve done. By doing this he allowed himself to be punished in our place, saving us from divine punishment! He stood in our place, like a shield!

You see, whenever sin is committed death is the consequence that follows as payment. That’s just God’s way of doing things. You see, we will all experience a physical death, but a spiritual death has also happened, separating us from a connection with God. God’s prerequisite is perfection, yet we’ve all earned ourselves a death sentence. The amazing thing is, Jesus Christ lived on this earth and faced the exact same things we did, yet he never sinned! Not even once!! Because if this there was finally someone that fulfilled God’s prerequisite.

Think about this for a second... He was righteous, he singlehandedly did the one thing nobody else ever in history had ever done; live a perfect sinless life in perfect fellowship with his Creator. He was the most holy and most perfect human on this earth, worthy of worship and glorification. Yet He took this status and sacrificed it. He threw it away, laying it at the foot of the cross. He loves us and has so much mercy on us that He would put himself through divine judgment willingly to save us!

He was crucified after being beaten and whipped. Then He died; enduring the rejection of His Father and the punishment of the full wrath of the Living God for all the sins of the world. Can you believe that He voluntarily chose to do this? Isaiah 53:5 says “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.” He was scorned, rejected, beaten and abused by the very ones he came to save! And it was 100% without cost to us.

We can fully trust that God accepted Christ’s payment because he rose from the dead. This showed us he had conquered death; spiritual death nonetheless and was free from its power. That also makes us free from death’s grasp, in Him! “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55)

We have only to believe it in our hearts and trust Christ’s sacrifice for us.

It’s not the choice to believe, or a prayer we pray that gets us right with God. No action of ours can get us saved. It’s all in what Christ has done!

Sister, I pray every day that you will realize this. I pray that through believing, through truly clinging to Christ more than you’ve clung to anything before in your life, you would see the futility of drugs, sex, alcohol and worldly living. They’ve ruined your life. They are unfaithful lovers, promising joy and fulfillment while they tear you and your soul to pieces. Run from them. Run to Christ!

I pray that someday soon, even today, that you would accept Christ’s sacrifice and promise to make you righteous in God’s sight no matter what you’ve done. Allow the Holy Spirit to change you radically and make you into a whole new person! He will give you different goals, different passions and different affections than you’ve ever had before. Christ promises this change. It starts with belief and results in an outside change. Will you choose to believe it?

Run to righteousness, purity, contentment, love and peace. With Christ you can find rest from your troubles. In Him you will find true satisfaction that never ends. You’ve tasted and seen all the world has to offer, now taste and see the goodness of God in a whole new light!

Please think about this. Life is passing away so quickly. Our days are numbered, and I don’t want you to be eternally lost… or ashamed of how you used your time here on earth.

I’m be looking forward to meeting with you again one day. I love you very much.

(God loves you even more!)

~Your sister