So when I was 13 years old, her name was, well, we'll we'll call her name to be Cindy Joe because just to be safe in case she ever listens to the podcast along the way.
Don't want her to know I'm talking about her because we had quite a romance when I was 13.
I was in the eighth grade.
She was everything I could dream her to be.
She was beautiful.
She was popular.
Now, my status had not always been so phenomenal through middle school, but I had caught a break.
I caught a huge break in the social strata politics of Richards Middle School, and that was that Jimmy Hagood down the street was willing to sell me his Z.
Caverici pants.
And this was a big deal if you're 36 or around there, or maybe you're in your 60s and you have a child who's about 36, because to have Z.
Cavericci pants in middle school meant everything.
But we couldn't afford them because at DJ's they were about$80 at the mall, and we couldn't afford them at DJs.
But Jimmy was a couple years older, and Jimmy was willing to sell me his Z Cavericis for$40, and so I bought a pair of jeans, a pair of green pair of pants, and like this brownish leathery looking.
And if you remember, they were the pants that had Z.
Cavericci on the fly itself.
Very classy pair of pants.
But these were key to my social standing in middle school, as social standing in middle school is always, you know, a combination of really important factors like this.
So I wore these pants and my social status went up, and before I knew it, I caught word that Cindy Jo was interested in me.
Now I knew nothing about Cindy Joe, mind you.
Nothing of her character.
I knew nothing about what she liked or disliked or whether she liked or disliked the things that I liked or disliked.
But she was everything that I could ever dream of.
And the news itself was all I needed.
We began to write notes to each other.
That was pencil and paper, and you folded them up in creative ways, and in the hallway you handed them off.
It was revolutionary if you did something like that today, middle schoolers.
Just do it.
You could be a revolutionary in your school.
And so we would trade notes, and they were about nothing, right?
I mean, the notes were about absolutely nothing, but they were every they were everything.
So I still knew nothing about her, but what I knew was that she was interested in me, and that's all it took.
All it took for me as a 13-year-old was for a pretty girl to be interested in me, and she had me.
Like she had, I was completely won over just by the fact that a pretty girl was interested in me.
Some of you are 13, you're going, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Like I've had it happen or I'm waiting for it to happen.
Right?
My response needed nothing else, right?
So two romances this morning.
That's the first romance, and it was about a thrilling one-month romance with Cindy Joe.
A lot of really good notes.
And it's our first point, and it is a point that this week, as I was doing some reading, and we have a book group, a group of uh guys at the church, and so I kind of stumbled into this point, and it's this teenage love, and some of you, if you've been a teenager, most of us, teenage love reveals to us our response to God's love.
Right?
Because all it took, and you remember being a teenager, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it didn't matter what City Joe was actually like, just the fact that somebody that pretty liked me was enough to win me over.
Like it sealed the deal.
See, teenage love clues us in to the fact that we can be won over just by simply being loved by another person.
So the quote that this week kind of hit me was by theologian Paul Zoll.
It's the book we're reading in our book group, and here's the quote: One-way love, God's love, is the change agent in everyday life because it speaks in a voice completely different from the voice of law.
So in the voice of standards and demand and always measuring up, God's one-way love speaks in a different way.
It has nothing to do with its receiver's characteristics, right?
Cindy Joe's love to me had nothing to do with it, she didn't even know me, but for some reason she liked me.
That's all I needed, it's all I needed.
Its logic is hidden within the intention of its source.
Maybe she loved those Z.
Cavrici genes so much.
That might have been it.
Might have sealed the deal for her.
Theologically speaking, we can say it is the prime directive of God to love the world in no relation to the world's fitness to be loved.
See, that's really good news.
And maybe you don't realize how good a news that is because maybe you haven't kind of clued in yet to the depth of how much you're not fitnessed to be loved by God.
Like that you haven't earned it, and yet he loves you anyways.
That is in no relation.
His love toward you is in no relation to your fitness to be loved.
So all this work and all this effort that we do, maybe in the secular world, you think you're gonna become enough, and then all of a sudden you're gonna feel loved, or in the religious world, you're gonna do enough in the religious world, or in the moral world, you're gonna do enough, and then you'll be fitness to be loved.
There's no end to that.
And God's love is a love that is complete while we're sinners, while we're imperfect, while we have no fitness to be loved.
And this is this is an amen, right?
This is an amen if you're struggling on the treadmill of life and you're clued into this.
If you feel like you can never quite catch up, like no matter how good you get, you're never quite enough.
Never quite feel, maybe you would never admit it out loud, but you know what on the inside, you just never quite feel like you're enough.
This is really good news, and this clues us into that second romance, which is how we're at the cross and at the resurrection.
Let me frame it this way: in this verse, it's in your bulletin, 2 Corinthians 7.10.
And this probably almost seems like a strange verse to read on Easter, but Christy read it to me Sunday night because you know that's what we do in our house.
We just read each other's verses all the time.
We sit around and, like, hey, let's open the Bible, read verses to each other.
That's what we should do it all night.
Um, but she did read me a verse Sunday night, and I when she read it, it was fantastic.
I was like, that's unbelievable.
She explained it to me, she was teaching me, and I was like, that's great.
I was like, that's that's like that's what Easter does, is this verse.
This is what Easter's about in everyday life.
Listen to it.
2 Corinthians 7, 10.
For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret.
No regret.
Free.
Whereas worldly grief produces death.
So let me let me break this down a little bit just for a couple minutes, because we have this verse that's everything to do with life and death, and I want you to have life, so I want us to talk about so what's clear in this passage is we will all have grief.
We're all gonna have grief.
We're all gonna have grief inside of ourselves, and so we must know and discern and rightfully respond to the type of grief that we are feeling, whether it's legitimate grief, or whether it's a worldly grief that us as believers in Jesus we don't have to deal with anymore, or whether it's a godly grief that we can joyfully, freeingly respond to in repentance.
So, worldly grief, that's the first one I want to talk about.
It's the second half of the verse.
Worldly grief is sorrow, it's a sadness.
So the word actually means a heaviness.
Anybody ever felt that?
Just a heaviness that weighs you down.
It finds its origin.
Worldly grief finds its origin in you trying to always live up to a worldly standard.
To be enough.
To be enough morally, to be enough religiously, to be enough in the secular world, in an achievement, to be enough of a parent, to be enough of a in the right crowd, to have enough income, to be just to be enough.
If I can only be enough, and worldly grief comes into that way of life, that merit way of life, and comes in and creates grief inside of you, and thus creates regret inside of you.
And because of that, it's a place of shame.
It's a place of unworthiness.
And the shame is there because we never feel like we're enough.
So the New York Times uh wrote about an article done, uh research done by Northwestern University.
They did the research back in 2011, and they did all these polling of people, and they said, hey, what's your what's your greatest regret?
And the number one was romance, probably why I'm talking about Cindy Joe, probably why you still think about your ninth grade sweetheart, although you wouldn't tell your spouse that you do, but you do think about your ninth grade sweetheart, because we all have we all have regret when it comes to romance.
And then the second one, third one, fourth one that comes down is family, education, career, money, or health.
Oh, we we we should be better about that.
And so we should, you know, so we have regret or how we treated someone, something we said, whether we gave up on a lost opportunity.
And here's what's clear in all that research was that we all have regret.
We all have regret.
And now the regret actually changes based on like your education level and your socioeconomic status, but what's clear is we all have regret.
So we're writing our story, our life, and what is just clear is this, is that we all have grief, and we all have regret, and we all have shame.
So the question becomes: how do we live without it?
How do we live without the regret and the grief, the shame?
How do we live without it?
Because this verse, this passage is saying like we can we can live in a salvation without regret.
To be able to move on with a clean slate, salvation without regret.
And this is why that second romance is so important, because the first romance with Cindy Joe or your first romance with your career or with your morality, it will never give you salvation without regret.
It won't give you salvation and eternal life with God after you pass on, which we all will, nor will that salvation be able to speak into today.
But salvation with God, the second romance, it has the ability to give salvation in eternity, and that salvation can speak into today, which is how we get without regret.
And here's how it works because it has the power to woo you, win you over, save you, relieve you of that merit game.
To save you and fulfill you and heal you and cleanse you and help you begin to live in the salvation, and for you to realize that you have a clean slate, your slate does not look like this anymore, that your slate is actually clean, a new identity, and that you can live from that place.
And you feel that worldly grief coming on, you say, No, no, I don't live out of that place, I don't live out of this place.
I live out of a place where my slate is clean.
Now, godly grief is different.
The word's still the same.
That word grief in that verse is the same.
It's still sorrow.
It's still sorrow, but it has a different origin and a different path.
Its sadness is based on God and his ways and how he relates to you and what he thinks of you.
And he's not the teacher waiting to slap you on the hand.
That's not what he's the loving Abba Father waiting for you to come home.
He's the gracious voice that's never heard from the world.
And so repentance is the humility and the freedom to finally say, This is me.
This is me.
I'm not perfect, and I'm in desperate need of your grace toward me.
I'm in need of the cross, all my sin put upon the cross, and your righteousness given to me, and I'm in need of Easter, that there is new life.
Now, what we often live like is something like this.
I think we think that the cross and the resurrection has about this much power.
And we still feel like there's some work left for us to do.
And this is where regret keeps coming into a Christian.
Is we think it's that powerful.
Like in terms of the cleansing power of anything you have done, where in fact it is much more powerful than that, because it is this, it is absolution.
It's absolution.
For the grief that you hold for the way you've lived, things you've done, mistakes, lost opportunity, all that regret.
The New York Times article, all of that, all of that.
The way you read the scriptures and you go, I hadn't lived up to that, I hadn't lived up to that, I hadn't lived up to that.
The cross and the resurrection is enough for all of it.
And that's where we find salvation, is in Jesus' act and work for you.
And how we get to salvation without regret is to believe and trust that it really is enough.
Even when I don't feel emotionally like it is enough, it is enough, and I'm gonna live out of the fact and the truth that it is enough.
And so that's the second point.
God's perfect love frees you for honesty, repentance, and life.
To be buried with Christ and raised to new life.
Many of us have been waiting for new life, right?
I mean, you just wait constantly waiting for new life.
I was walking in the woods this week.
That's my kind of safe place, is go walk in the woods.
And this time of year I love, and the reason why I love it is because you're walking through the woods, and I was out at Kennesaw Park, and I'm walking through the woods, and pretty much everything was still dormant.
I mean, literally this week, everything's kind of come into life, as you know.
You've been looking around, you're driving around.
So I'm in the woods, and I'm walking through the woods, and there's just trees, right?
And you can see through the trees just coming out of winter, all the foliage hadn't grown up, and so you see through, and it's just a lot of brown, really a lot of brown.
But but but all these little tiny life-infused, flickering green dots are starting.
And I love it.
I love it that Easter's in the springtime because of this, because we see that the warmth is overcoming the cold.
And there is a cold existence.
And the cold existence is a life of merit, whether it be in a religious merit system of trying to be loved enough or redeemed by your work, or whether it be in a secular world of trying to be valued enough by your secular work, that is a cold existence.
It is a life of grief and regret and shame.
But this second romance we're talking about, this is the warmth that can overcome the cold.
If we doubt God's love for us, we can look at Friday and look at the cross.
If we doubt what love can accomplish for us, what his love can accomplish for us, then we can look at Easter, we can look at today, and we can look at the resurrection.
That it's all around us.
You don't have to live in the death of worldly grief and regret.
You can live out of the fact and the truth that he cleansed you.
Your slate is clean.
So, my brothers and sisters, may you trust in Jesus' sufficient atoning sacrifice and resurrection for you, and may you rest in the salvation he gives you eternally and how it speaks to you today.
May you learn how to apply that salvation to your life today, and may you live in his great grace and peace.
Let's pray together.
God, thank you that while we are not always fitnessed to be loved, that you love us anyways, and while we were sinners, you came and died for us, and that death does not win, condemnation does not win, shame and guilt and regret does not win, but there is a salvation based on a work outside of ourselves that is given to us, and we are the recipients of this sufficient atoning sacrifice of yourself for us.
No greater love than this love that has the ability to woo us and win us and heal us and cleanse us.
Would you help us?
As we often don't believe it.
We often don't trust in it.
We pray this in Jesus' name.