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10th grade math was the worst!  It was geometry class, and I wasn’t any good at it. I thought I would ask my boyfriend (now husband) to tutor me on Wednesday nights after youth group , but since I was more interested in 1+1 than in theorems, that didn’t work out so well. I also asked my dad for help, like real sit-down-and-show-me help, but he would just tell me, “You don’t have to understand it, you just have to do it.” That didn’t work out so well either because I still don’t know what he meant by that…

So, it was the end of the school year and we had a test (on something I don’t care to remember and have never used since then) that I knew I was going to fail. The day or so before the test, I noticed that several of my classmates had made themselves a “cheat” sheet. I remember thinking, “I have stayed up late studying, I have done all the homework, I have asked questions, I have sought help outside of class, and I STILL don’t know what I am doing.” In light of comparison, I thought I was well justified in joining the crowd and making myself a “cheat” sheet as well.

“Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong.” – Exodus 23:2

During the test, I remember sitting at my desk, my head held in my hands staring at my questions. Tucked under my test sheet was a tiny corner of paper with formulas printed ever so carefully in the faintest of pencil. I hadn’t even used it.

I looked up at the clock and my heart started to pound a little harder and faster. After forty minutes had passed, students all around me began to turn their papers in and leave class. With ten minutes left, I had no idea how to answer the problems.

Time was ticking and with most of the sheet still to answer, I finally decided to give it up and just deal with a failing grade. I was the last student sitting at my seat and my teacher was looming over me, waiting to snatch my paper as soon as the bell rang. This time, I wasn’t saved by the bell. He reached down and slid the paper off of the table and my stomach dropped when I remembered I had hidden that oh so small, but forbidden “cheat sheet” under it. I slammed my hand down on the paper, and he pulled it out from under my red palm. The little piece of paper fluttered to the floor and my face turned as red as my palm.

“Ooohhh, one of THOSE!” is all he said.

My eyes hung down in shame, and I plotted my defense; “Everyone else had one too.” “I didn’t even use it.” “I probably failed anyways.”

He never said a word more about it, just, “Have a nice day Miss Jackson.”

I remember the feeling of justification for having a “way out” of failing. I thought my inadequacies in math would disappear with the help of something I knew was wrong, but it was no help at all. Not even a smidgeon. I thought I would be filled up with having all the right answers, but all I felt was hollow for having done something wrong.

I’ve never forgotten that lesson. Ever. Even though the geometry never stuck in my head, that hard learned lesson has never left.

So many times in our lives we make decisions that require consequences. Some of the hardest things we have to do are a result of the actions we must take after we’ve done something wrong. They might just be the lessons that stick with us the longest too.

It’s not enough to just realize we’ve done something wrong. Anyone can see if our actions are wrong. We know the things we should do verses the things we shouldn’t do. I knew it wasn’t honest to have a cheat sheet, so I hid it. I swept it under the rug, instead of sweeping it out of my life.

We all make bad choices. The story is as old as the Bible’s beginning; Noah got drunk, Moses broke tablets, Peter betrayed his friend, but thankfully, that’s not the end of the story! (Genesis 9:21; Exodus 32:19; Mark 14:72)

The key is having the humility of heart to learn the lesson. When you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, or you think you are justified in what you are doing it’s hard to see the fault that should shake you to your knees.

It’s hard to see the fault that should shake you to your knees.

When Jesus was teaching crowds of people near his hometown, the Pharisee’s came to him and demanded to see him perform a miraculous sign. Their fault was that they weren’t looking for the sign to change their heart, they were looking for  a way to snare him. They were looking to set a hook in his teaching and reel him in. He told them that the only sign they would receive was the sign of Jonah who was three days and nights in the belly of a fish,  but even with that sign they would not learn.

The price we pay when we don’t learn hard lessons is costly. Over and over we fall into the same snares and traps, over and over we think the next time we get the chance we will make better choices, over and over we start over. The cost is heavy on our time, our resources, our relationships, and ourselves. If we repeat the same mistakes and do not learn from them we are worse off than when we started for the trouble we get into. Jesus put it this way,

“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” – Matthew 12:43-45

It isn’t enough to just decide to not do wrong things. That time I cheated was hard, and it was hard getting caught. The hollow feeling, the heavy pit in my stomach was worse than getting a failing grade. But if I had continued doing it, cheating would have gotten so much easier, and I would have been able to hide it so much better. But hidden things don’t stay hidden for long, eventually the truth comes out.

“There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.”  – Luke 12:2

I had made the mistake of thinking I could find an easy way around a difficult lesson. I got a ‘D’ on my test. I knew I should have gotten an ‘F’, so I took a deep breath and walked the impossibly huge gap of space from my seat to my teacher’s desk, and I said “I’m sorry for cheating.”

He answered, “I trust it won’t happen again.”

And it didn’t, because instead of berating or failing me, he trusted me. I grabbed hold of that trust like a broom and I swept out the shame and invited in the feeling of forgiveness which filled up my heart so there was no room to want to make that mistake ever again. Jesus offers to fill our clean houses with his love and forgiveness. When we invite Jesus to walk through the door of our heart, he moves us from feeling hollow to hallowed.  With his love we are clean and we are filled so there is no room to be worse off than we were.

He moves us from feeling hollow to hallowed.

If Jesus came to your home, what would he see and say, “ooohhh, one of THOSE?”