Earlier this month I went to a conference held by Pure Life
Ministry in Kentucky. Pure Life Ministry’s main vision is to help people fight
against sexual sins and live a sexually pure life. The corner stone of their
ministry is a 7-month residential program, in which people commit to live a
communal life with others who also struggle with sexual sin in a peaceful rural
area cut off from Internet and other worldly distractions. I found out about
this residential program when I entered the church where the conference was held.
As you might have guessed, I did not attend this conference out of pure
curiosity—its topic was relevant to myself. However, despite of the struggles I
had had with sexual sins, no sooner did I see the banner about the residential
program than I started to feel grateful to God that my sins were not so bad that
I had to go through such a boring, even shameful program—if I did go through
the program, I certainly would have kept it a secret to my grandparents.
At that moment, different thoughts were flashing through my
mind. The idea that I was not bad enough to join the residential program was
surprisingly reminiscent of something other ISEEDERs and I read together in a
book called A Meal with Jesus,
according to which, Pharisees in Jesus’s time used to thank God that they were
born clean—not as Gentiles, tax collectors and all other kinds of sinners. Upon
making the connection, I had a smile of embarrassment, although no one knew I
smiled because just like Pharisees, I thought I was better than others, and
even thanked God for that…
I realized my pride, but my attitude to the residential
program did not change a bit—that it would be so boring to live in place cut
off from technology and crowded with other guys. When I was incapable of
changing myself, praise to the Lord, that He once again changed my thoughts. It
just so happened, or should I say, God arranged that a fund-raising banquet was
schedule on the next day, and one of the program was a choir of the all the
current members of the residential program. When the choir entered the ball
room, they were welcomed with a standing ovation. Standing close to the
entrance, I could clearly see each resident when they entered the room, and
among them were both people of my age and grey-haired elders walking with a
cane.
The ball room reverberated with hand clapping sound. As my
hands gradually went numb, so did my heart and mind, deeply touched and blown away
by these people’s humbleness to join a program that I frowned upon as boring,
and their commitment to set aside 7 months of life that I could not imagine to
go through. On a behavioral level, their sins were probably worse than mine,
but once having found out a program through which God may powerfully extend His
healing hand, they chose to obey and follow, with faith, holding on to a thread
of hope for what they had not yet seen. Earlier that day, a delivery car came
with divorce papers for a guy. Staying there was not easy.
That night, I heard a story of a man who came to the program
with a gun in his car trunk, thinking to commit suicide if the program could
not help. In the end, he did not use his gun. That weekend, I came in with an
arrogance that I was better than those who needed to go through the program,
only to leave with an admiration of the faith of the “bad sinners”.
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