David Powlison - Making All Things New: Restoring Joy to the Sexually Broken

Making
All
Things
New

Restoring Joy to the Sexually Broken

David Powlison

To Nan

A vibrant quilt has adorned a wall in our home for many years. The artist took bright swatches of fabric and cut hundreds of tiny squares and triangles. She created a lattice pattern through which you gaze into a luminous, iridescent garden. I view her quilt as an invitation to pause and catch a glimpse into a paradise. The latticework encloses, protects, provides structure, and reveals wonders. The garden within creates an impression of flower and color, air and light, life and pleasure. It gives a small picture of our Gods two great works: the goodness of his creation and the goodness of his salvation.

Both creation and salvation embrace human sexuality. Sex is an elemental good in Gods fruitful work in creation. Our sexuality is a renewed good by his fruitful working in salvation. Imagine sexuality transformed into a garden of wise love, safety, wisdom, self -control, and delight.

Imagine growing up within the protection of the lattice. Children are protected from the stains of betrayal, molestation, and assault. Sons and daughters are not defiled and sexualized by exposure to lewd humor and to suggestive or pornographic images. The sexually immature are cared for.

Imagine the dignity of sexual restraint as the first lesson of budding adulthood. We enter sexual maturity as singles, not marrieds. Friends, brothers, sisters, children, parents, and strangers are never meant to become objects of sexualized attention. Every willing learner must learn (and often relearn) broad - spectrum self - control as a core expression of love. And those who eventually marry will find that there are seasons where sexual restraint is the form love takes.

Imagine sexual desire freed and focused within the union of husband and wife. There is love, pleasure, and beauty in sexual expression during those seasons when it is a core facet of marital fidelity and love. Our sexuality was designed to be a willing servant of love. It becomes distorted by our willfulness or our fear. It is being remade into a willing servant of love. Love makes sexuality like a laser beam: its power under control, its intensity focused, nothing wasted or promiscuously scattered.

You will flourish in a garden of safety and joy.

How can this ever be? We become so stained with lewd desire and our own transgressions. And the transgressions of others so darken us with hurt and fear. How can all wrongs be made right? Jesus , the merciful, steadily intervenes. To the indulgent, he brings forgiveness, covering perverse pleasures with new innocence. To the frightened, he brings refuge, the name that calms our fears and bids our sorrows cease. There is pleasure and protection in Christ, Gods inexpressible gift. Sexuality becomes wise, and wisdom is that gift of God to which nothing else you desire can compare (Prov. 3:1315 ).

The lovely quilt is an object lesson in creation and re -creation.

Needing a contrasting object lesson, I stopped in to talk with my auto mechanic. He fished a greasy rag from the trash bin at the back of his garage and handed it to me. Unnamable filth had soaked through that scrap of fabric. Ground -in, oily dirt. If your hands are clean, you dont really feel like touching such a sordid rag. If you must handle such an object, you pick it up by one corner between thumb and forefinger, holding it out away from you at arms length. The filthy rag gives us a second, all -too- familiar picture of sexuality. Sex soaks up dark, dirty stains. We must face ground - in evils if we are to repair whats wrong with us and help others with whats wrong with them. You understand why Jude evokes an unpleasant sense of wariness even amid his call to generous - hearted love: To others show mercy, mixed with fearhating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh (Jude 23 NIV).

Greasy - rag experiences turn sex itself into a darkness of renegade desires, lingering hurts, haunting shame. The darkness and stain reside not in being created sexual beings but in the doubled evil of the human condition. Evils arise from within us; evils fall upon us. We misuse our bodies, and our bodies are misused by others.

How is your life turning out with regard to sexuality? A garden in the lattice? A greasy rag from the trash bin? Here is Jesus s personal purpose statement as he goes about his good work in us: Behold, I am making all things new (Rev. 21:5). This book explores that making new. But before we delve into the processes of that renewal, let me begin by identifying three orienting realities.

One key to fighting well is to lengthen your view of the battle. If you think that one week of shock and awe combat will win this war of redemption, youre bound to be disappointed. If youre looking for some magic, an easy answer, a one -and- done solution, then youll never really understand the nature of the honest fight. And if you promise easy, once -for- all victories to others, then youll never be much help to other strugglers.

God works organically in our lives. Organic growth has integrity. God works step -by-step. He walks with you. Hes always interested in how you take your very next step. Walking through life with him feels right. Youre going somewhere. The day of completion will not arrive until the day when Jesus Christ arrives (Phil. 1:6). When we see him, then we will be like him (1 John 3:2). Only when God lives visibly in our midst will all tears be past (Rev. 21:34). Someday, not today, everything being renewed will be entirely new (Rev. 21:5). Much of the failure to fight well, befriend well, pastor well, and counsel well arises because we dont really understand and work well with this long truth.

Consider two specific implications. First, sanctification is a direction you are heading. Second, repentance is a lifestyle you are living.

Sanctification Is a Direction

Often our practical view of sanctification, discipleship, and counseling posits a monochromatic answer and takes the short view. If you memorize and call to mind one special Bible verse, will it clean up all the mess? Will the right kind of prayer life drive all the darkness away? Will remembering that you are a child of God and justified by faith shield your heart against every evil? Will developing a new set of habits take away the struggle? Is it enough to sit under good preaching and have daily devotions? Is honest accountability to others the decisive key to walking in purity? Will careful self - discipline and a plan to live constructively eliminate the possibility of failure?

These are all very good things. But none of them guarantees that three weeks from now, or three years, or thirty years, you will not still be learning how to love rather than lust. We must have a vision for a long process (lifelong), with a glorious end (the last day), that is actually going somewhere (today). Put those three together in the right way, and you have a practical theology thats good to go and good for the going.

Look at church history. Look at denominations. Look at local churches. Look at people groups. Look at families. Look at other people. Look at the people in the Bible. Each has a history and keeps making history because the challenges that sanctification faces do not end. And as John Newton sang:

Through many dangers, toils, and snares

I have already come,

because

grace has brought me safe thus far,

and grace will lead me home.

Look at yourself. In this life, we can never say: Ive made it. No more forks in the road. No more places where I might stumble and fall flat. No more hard, daily choices to make. No more need for daily grace. Life never operates on cruise control. The living God seems content to work in his church and in people groups on a scale of generations and centuries. The living God seems content to work in individuals (you, me, the person you are trying to help) on a scale of years and decades , throughout a whole lifetime. At every step, theres some crucial watershed issue. What will you choose? Whom will you love and serve? Theres always something that the Vinedresser is pruning, some difficult lesson that the Father is teaching the children he loves (John 15; Hebrews 12). Its no accident that God is love and love is patient fit together seamlessly. God takes his time with us.