Depth of the Sea

Sin is an interesting thing. No matter how long we've been a Christian or how strong our faith is, we've all struggled with sins. We all have areas of our life that we need to change and do better. We all strive to live out the love of God, we all try to put Jesus on the throne of our life, we all aim to resemble Jesus, but often we fail. We've succumbed to temptations, we've said or done things we are not proud of, we've felt the shame and frustrations of our mistakes, and we've come before God and repented over and over... It says in 1 John,

"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9

Sometimes though, even when we know God forgives us over and over, we just feel so ashamed by what we've said or done that we can't move on. I've been reminded by an article recently of the profoundness of God's love and forgiveness for us. I was quite encouraged by it and I wanted to share with you what I've learned. I thought it gave a wonderful illustration of the depth of God's forgiveness. It says in Micah,

"You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea." Micah 7:19

According to this, our sins are casted into the depth of the ocean. Have you ever wondered how deep the sea actually is? I have when I thought about this verse. According to wikipedia, the average depths of the earth's ocean is as follows; Arctic Ocean is 3,407 feet, Indian Ocean is 12,740 feet, Atlantic Ocean is 12,254 feet, and Pacific Ocean is 13,740 feet deep. The deepest part of Pacific Ocean is the Mariana Trench, and the deepest point of that trench is the Challenger Deep. It is 36,201 feet! Now, it's hard to grasp just how deep that is, so let's put that into perspective. The world's tallest tree is the Coast Redwood in California, it is 379 feet. It is just a size of a floating spec compared to Challenger Deep. The world's tallest building is Burj Dubai in Dubai, it is 2,684 feet. The Challenger Deep is more than 13 times higher than Burj Dubai. The world's highest mountain is Mount Everest. It is 29,035 feet. If we place Mount Everest into the Mariana Trench, there still would be 7,166 feet of water above it! In other words, even if our sins piled as high as Mount Everest, God's grace is still sufficient to cover us! Like the song East to West by Casting Crown says, we are drowning in His sea of forgetfulness.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that we should be abusing this grace that God gave us. Instead, we need to be reminded just how precious this grace is and how blessed we are to have received this grace. God calls us to come before Him and repent when we sin, what does that mean? It means we need to reflect on what we've done wrong, ask for forgiveness, and we need to make amends. Then we learn from our mistake and we need to move on. Often we become so distraught by what we've done wrong, or we feel so burdened by our guilt that we can't move on. It's like we are driving on a highway and we almost hit a deer. Then we spend rest of the drive looking in our review mirror thinking about the deer instead of looking forward to anything that's happening ahead. But God is telling us that we need to look ahead, and be on guard for any other deers that might run out. In other words, we need to stop looking back and starting looking forward to what's ahead. Paul reminded us in 2 Corinthians that we all have weaknesses and we've all sinned, but here is what God said:

"But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me." 2 Corinthians 12:9

So let us praise God for His grace over us and let us rejoice in His forgiveness. It is through our weaknesses that His power rest upon us. Remember, God sees us beyond our sins, He sees us as who we can be, so now let us shine for Him!