AN OPEN LETTER TO A SINNER by Mike Emlet for Core Christianity
My dear friend,
I’m grateful for the opportunity we had to talk a few days ago. As I’ve prayerfully reflected on our time, I realize that there are things that would have been helpful for me to say. I can tend to be a conflict avoider so please know that writing to you now is reflective of my deep concern for you. I’m not trying to pick a fight or to suggest that somehow I’ve got it all together and you don’t. I come as a person most certainly in process also, “tempted, tried, and sometimes failing” as a familiar hymn reminds us.
I see that you are at a true crossroads. You’re getting weary and discouraged, fighting against desires that threaten to take you far afield of God’s design for your life. But it’s more than that. I heard notes of cynicism as you spoke. You’re entertaining voices that say, “God wants me to be happy, not miserable” or “It shouldn’t be this hard” or “What’s the point of these oppressive rules?” Increasingly, obedience seems pointless to you. You’re thinking, “Why not give in and give up, once and for all?”
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Here’s why. Actually, the apostle Paul says it better than I ever could: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1). You want freedom? True freedom—living and flourishing as God designed you to live—means keeping in step with the Spirit. Paradoxically, your pursuit of “freedom” will send you headlong into the jaws of slavery. Not living in keeping with your identity in Christ is the real oppression.
I know it doesn’t seem like that right now. But can I humbly suggest that your imagination needs to be super-sized? You fantasize about living without the constraints of hard-fought obedience, visualizing an oasis of fulfilled desires and comfort. My mind sometimes drifts there too, like the Israelites in the wilderness. They craved the leeks and meat of Egypt instead of God’s daily provision of manna (boring!) and the difficult step-by-step journey of faith as those who had been redeemed from slavery (grueling monotony!). But what about, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit” (1 Cor 2:9–10).
