From the desk of Jordy Barksdale, Director of Campus Life & Ministry:

This week is a big week in Brook Hill athletics! Our Middle School and Upper School volleyball teams played All Saints on Monday and our JV and Varsity played Dallas Shelton on Tuesday. Our 7^th and 8^th grade football teams’ play before the JV game at Grace and our Middle School volleyball teams also play Grace. The finale of our athletic events starts at 7:30 at Herrington Stadium when our Varsity Football teams hosts in-town rival, Grace Community School. Granted I am new to the Brook Hill family, but I am certain there will be a packed house of passionate fans on both sides. This game is important to both schools. Something about competing against a rival, brings all the more excitement. Go Guard!

You may read this title and think it applies to the game on Friday. The football game will undoubtedly be a dog fight, but I wanted to draw our attention to a different competition. In fact, it’s more than a competition – it’s a war.  This war is already being waged.  There is a perpetual battle that believers in Jesus Christ face on a daily, hourly basis. This battle will push you one of two ways – to guilt or to grace.

You probably know this battle well in your own life. In one ear you’ve got the enemy whose identity is “only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). 1 Peter 5:8 further describes the enemy in a vivid, chilling manner as one who “prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” His goal is to remind you of your past sin and allow that regret to sink you in to a pit of guilt and shame. Once in this place, you find yourself holding on to the pain of your past mistakes, squeezing it tight and not allowing forgiveness to wash it away. If you’ve been in this spot, you know what it’s like. You become paralyzed by guilt, which hinders your willingness to be a joyful, confident ambassador of Christ to the people you love. The deceiver tells you that hope is lost because your sin is too great, that your future is forever tarnished by your mistakes and short-comings. Guilt begins to flood your mind, keeping your focus on your sin.

The other side of the battle leads you to grace. Not the school, but the state of being. The grace that is found in the person and character of Jesus Christ when he paid the heavy price of our sin on the cross. You see, Jesus knows your sin. He knows you better than anyone else and still loves you more than anyone else. In his grace, God sent his Son to live a perfect life, die a gruesome death to sufficiently pay the price for your sins to be forgiven and He rose from the grave so that you can be in a relationship with Him. We look to what occurred on the cross and see this perfect love, exhibited by this heart-breaking death and it all points to the grace of Jesus Christ. Grace is freely receiving something that we don’t deserve. Because of the sin in our life, we deserve death. But because of the gift of eternal life, we get life. John 10:10 says “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

God did not create us to live a life marked by guilt and shame. He has called us to love others by showing them the light of the world, the good news of Jesus Christ. Believers are to be defined by those who are living as if their sins are not counted against them. Praise God that “You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness” (Romans 6:18).

Through the blood of Christ shed on the cross, we are longer bound to the guilt of our sin. Sin has no dominion, no power, no authority, and no ability to control us any longer. Praise God!

Today is game day in this fight. Will you let the enemy continue to take your joy and keep you in the backseat of the guilt train? Or are you willing to live as if what Scripture says about you is true – that you are forgiven and able to live according to His grace?

“For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.” Romans 6:14