I just wanted to share a little testimony of what happened to me on Good Friday. I got up really early, my children were on a sleepover at their grandparents, and I was desperately trying to get my daughter's bedrooms painted. I had one more wall left to paint and it was the area just around the bay window and it was an awful wall. It was covered in cracks, it was very uneven, there was a slight hole under the windowsill and I'd really tried my utmost the day before to solve all these problems. I must have used about a kilogramme of Polyfilla and a spatula from my kitchen to just try and create some kind of smooth surface but despite my best efforts, it was still really, really bad! However, I needed to get the paint on and I decided, I'm just going to slap it on, nobody's going to notice. Nobody's going to look up close, the curtains are going to cover most of it anyway and so I just slapped this paint on. But as I was doing it, I was almost just saying to myself out loud "this is so bad, it's so embarrassing, this is so bad, this all is so bad”.

Anyway, I did it and because it was Good Friday and I was on my own, I went down into the living room and I just wanted to spend a few quiet moments with God just reflecting on Good Friday and what that means to me as a Christian. I was thinking about the similarities between me and that wall. How broken and imperfect, I am and how sometimes I don't want people to get up close and see the bad in me, and how sometimes I try keep people at a bit of a distance because I don't want them to know.

In response to that I spent some time reminding myself of some of the truths that I know that come from the Bible, of what Jesus achieved on the cross for me. Actually the Bible says that “whilst we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8) and it's not about my efforts in trying to make myself perfect to be accepted by Jesus, it's just by his grace, it's simply by believing in what he did on that cross, believing that he won the victory for me (Ephesians 2:8-9). Another verse that came to my mind as well, that I just reminded my heart about, was that “there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1-2), there's no need to feel guilt or shame for the things that we have done, the things that we're going to do. Again, scripture says that “by his wounds we are healed” (1 Peter 2:24) and I just spent time speaking these truths back over myself.

You know I've been a Christian over 30 years, but it was so good to remind my heart again of those truths and to know that I am a new creation in Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:17) and I felt that I wanted to share that with you today, maybe some of you feel a bit more like that broken wall this morning, but I just want you to know that those truths that I spoke over my heart are true for you today as well. Amen.