A Heavy Burden (Part 1 of Commandment Series)

A few years ago I almost walked away from the church.  I was tired of the the religious grind.  Ironically, all I learned growing up in the church seemed irrelevant and disconnected to the daily realities of having a dynamic relationship with Christ.   The truths I was taught were critical to spiritual health, left me feeling empty and disappointed.  I wanted so much more then what my church was "selling."  My heart longed for freedom but instead was shrinking into a confined space of death. 

The heaviest burden I was carrying during this time was related to the Ten Commandments.  I grew up in a church that emphasized the Law and prided itself in being one of the only Christian churches who kept ALL the Commandments. Our very name, Seventh Day Adventists, communicates the essence of what we believe.  We observe, the seventh day Sabbath (the fourth commandment) and we expectantly await the second coming of Christ.  The Law is intertwined into every fiber of our denomination.  If you toss aside the Commandments, it's really hard to remain a Seventh Day Adventist. 

So here I was, a Seventh day Adventist pastor's wife who is struggling with a foundational teaching of the church, who, if I was being honest, desperately wanted to walk away, and who was reading scripture like this one,

"Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.  For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law , were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.  But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code." Romans 7:4-6 (ESV)

  

and crying.   I could not reconcile the discrepancy between what my church taught (the Law brings life and is essential to a vibrant relationship with Christ) and the deadness I felt in my heart regarding that very truth. 

I knew I had arrived at a crossroads. I needed to make a decision. I either had to walk away or take another look at the Ten Commandments and see if I had missed something.  More out of cowardice than anything, I chose the latter.  I knelt down by my bed and opened the Bible.  I decided to go to Psalm 119 since the whole chapter is dedicated to the Law of God.  I read all of it.  There was one verse though that wouldn't let me go.

"I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statues." Psalm 119:48 (ESV)

There were a couple of thoughts that came to me.  First, I realized that I did not feel towards the Law what David felt towards the Law. The way he talked about it left me wondering what he was seeing that I was missing.  And second, the posture of lifting your hands toward something indicates worship.  Why would David worship tablets of stone?  It was this question that led me to the conclusion that David wasn't worshiping the actual commandments, but rather was lifting is hands toward the God who wrote them. 

This realization led me to pray from the deepest part of my heart.  Lord, you know my struggle.  You know my heart.  David saw and felt things regarding your Law that I don't see or feel.  He somehow managed to find you within those tablets of stone. If you are in the Law, Lord, I want to see you there.  If somehow things have changed and the Law is no longer relevant for my life, please reveal it to me.  As hard as it would be to walk away from the church I grew up with and now serve, I will do it because I want you more.  Amen.

To this day, I don't know why God chose to answer my prayer the way He did.  He poured out so much of Himself to me that even now, as I write, my breath literally catches in my throat. I am humbled with what I received that day.   What happened in the hours following that prayer has fundamentally changed the way I see the Ten Commandments.  Since that night six and a half years ago, I've had the honor of  speaking to hundreds of people in various Christian settings on how God is revealed in the Law.

Over the next few weeks, I want to share pieces of what I learned that night and in the years following that encounter.  I thought it appropriate to use this blog as a platform for this message as the Ten Commandments is typically not a teaching where you would expect to find God.  I'm excited to share this with you.  I hope you will find blessing, see grace, and experience the God I found hidden within tablets of stone.