"I got this"

One of my favorite shows of all time is Sons of Anarchy.

There's one episode in particular, that while I teared up watching it still is one of the best episodes in the show. The club got on the wrong side of a Oakland gangster who has the new president, his two closest friends, and another member all put in prison. The deal for them is this: Tig stays insides to rot, one has to die, and the other two can go. Jax can't decide who to give up, and it seems as if he's about to be the one to volunteer to go, but his best friend in the whole world steps up and takes it. Earlier in the episode before we see him, long hair, big beard, cutting wood to make something, giving off the image of a carpenter. Now he's volunteering to die so the rest of his friends can live. The last words spoken by him are him looking in the window at his brothers and saying three simple words, "I got this." He took the situation in his own hands, and went through it himself so that his brothers, the ones that he loved, could live.

Throughout my years I've come to known addicts. Some got clean, some didn't, some are on their way, some are in jail, some are probably dead. And it's sad. It breaks my heart wondering, "What if in some way I could have prevented this?" But that's not the question that needs to be asked. The question that needs to be asked is this, "How can I help them now?"

Those that I clean, I guarantee you that if we sat down with them and talked with them about how they got over their addiction they would all say the same thing. "With the love and support of those around me." It's not something they did on their own, they did it with the help of those surrounding them.

As a minister you would expect me to remember every sermon I've ever heard. Not true. I remember like 4, not including the one from this week. I'll forget that one by Sunday. But one of the few sermons I remember was an off the cuff sermon, where the dude crumbled up his notes and threw them away and talked about exactly what needed to be talked about. "You don't got this. You can't do it." It got depressing. Like that's not what people are supposed to say in sermons is it? You're supposed to fill us up, empower us, make us feel good about being in church and doing our Christian duty! Not tell us that we can't do it! And not do what by the way? Wait, we can't make it through life on our own? We can'ts survive on our own? What are you talking about man! Doesn't the Bible say that God helps those who helps themselves? Doesn't Jesus say that we gotta work for our own survival and salvation? Sure he made it a bit easier but it's us that have to live a certain way to maintain it right? God's not going to take care of us, we take care of ourselves, and maybe God will give us a little more if we go to church on a regular basis and give money right? You can't say that we can't do it! That's wrong!

And as this conversation is going through my head and I'm asking myself these questions and wondering what the hell this guy is saying I really start listening. All things have come from God, the very air that we breathe is a gift from God. He has given us enough grace that we can just live, and more than that he is offering us more grace so that we can be with him for eternity and not suffer the eternal consequences of our sin. I flip open my bible and run across Psalm 86.17 verses of David relying on God in all things.

Monday I wrote about how we need to depend on God. But why? Because we can't do it on our own. Our very life is a gift. We live in a broken world where things go wrong all the time because there is sin. Not just I suffer because of my sin. I suffer because of my parents sin, my siblings sin, my neighbors sin, my coworkers sin, my old bosses sin, Adam and Eve's sin. There's no way to escape it, or the consequences of it. Not on my own. I can't do it. But God can, and has, and will. Though I am a wretched man, God has still granted me grace, making me perfect in his eyes. And now I live as if I am in heaven now, worshiping God in all that I do for what HE did, not me. I can't save myself, only God can.

You don't got this. Only God does.