Spending some time at my cesspool

Whenever Brad and I have a long road trip, we try to listen to some sermons on his laptop. Driving back home from ND after Christmas was no exception. We listened to an almost 2 hour sermon by Dave Busby entitled, "Tasting our Depravity." If you haven't read anything by Dave Busby or heard him preach, you need to because he really is a dynamic teacher. He faced many hardships and diseases in his life, like polio and cystic fibrosis, and although he died in 1997, his words still carry truth and life today.

Busby created and shared images and illustrations that I haven't been able to shake. He shared a statement he had heard somewhere that really made me think. It was something like, the greatest need the church has today is to come to terms with its own sin. We as Christians, myself included, seem to think we're doing okay...at least better than many around us, when in reality we have forgotten the depth and stench of our own sin.

Busby said that we all have to experience (taste and smell) the cesspool of our own sin, and that for some of us, we need to experience it often. Because once we forget, we forget just what Christ truly did for us on the Cross and our gratitude becomes less and less...and our lives on this earth (through our eyes) look better and better.

The word cesspool had a profound effect on me. The meaning of cesspool is a receptacle for sewage. And even with that grotesque image, it still cannot fully describe the depth of my sin.

Busby also shared how people generally fall into 2 groups concerning this topic. The first group realizes that they need to spend more time with their cesspool, so that it can break them, free them from a works theology, humble them, and qualify them to help other believers. But the second group needs to spend more time at the Cross so that they can see Christ and what was done for them and stop beating themselves up over past sin.

I immediately knew which group I was in. I needed to spend more time at my cesspool.

A few weeks ago, a fellow BSF member walked into our discussion group and said, "I don't know about you, but I feel particularly wretched this morning." That really hit me because this member is such a wonderful, godly woman...why should she feel wretched? Because, she is in touch with her cesspool. She does not fully forget the depth and grotesqueness of her sin. And she is incredibly humbled by her own shortcomings.

I, on the other hand, tend to think I'm doing alright. Yes, I have my moments of anger or envy or bitterness, but I am usually quick to ask forgiveness. Yes, I THOUGHT I was doing just fine. Until I spent some time at my cesspool and realized the disgusting, hidden places of sin in my life.

And it is dark and nasty and smelly and foul, and nothing about it is pleasant at all.

But the incredibly good news is that when I compare my cesspool to the righteousness of Christ, my gratitude pours from every fiber in my being. I am not just thankful for a moment; I am thankful for a lifetime. Because again, Jesus did not come to save the healthy, but the sick. And if I think I'm healthy all the time, I'm in some serious denial about the true state of my spiritual walk.

We all need to be growing in our faith and in our likeness to Christ, but in our growing we cannot forget about how terribly sinful we can still be. The moment we hear about another believer falling into sin, our first thought shouldn’t be, “I’d never do that.” It really should be, “I am also completely capable of doing that.”

Because, whether we want to admit it or not, we are all capable of the worst kinds of sin...and because of that, spending a little time at our own cesspools isn't such a bad idea.