Unshackled Echo ~ February 24, 2018 ~ Zombie Friends

Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on

February 20, 2015.

We've all either had or been that someone who just refused to change their attitude and behavior or to quit doing things damaging to a friendship. Sometimes the friendship ends in an ugly blowup of hurt and anger, sometimes friends "simply grow apart" and aren't friends anymore, and sometimes a zombie of the friendship arrives. Zombie friendship? Yes, it looks roughly like the same entity and moves around. But it's not the same, and movement isn't proof of life. In a Zombie friendship both parties may still claim to be friends, one may even mean it. They may do things together. They may still visit when they are around each other, like at church or when they run into one another at Wal-Mart. But the life has gone out of the relationship. There is no desire to seek out the other person. Who wouldn't rather avoid someone who keeps doing the same things that hurt you?

With true gratitude I  tell you that God does. No matter how many times we've blown it, regardless of repeated sins thrown in His Holy face, He doesn't want to avoid us. He sends  us messages that He wants to get together for a visit, that truthfully He loves us and wants to move in together. He calls over and over wanting to talk. It's ridiculous how often He'll interrupt our day to talk if we don't turn the ringer off. If we don't turn the ringer off.

And that's the problem. If we are in a Zombie friendship with God, one with no life that vaguely resembles a rotten shell of what we once experienced, it's on us. We're the one who lost our minds, not Him. We're the one with repeated sins that hurt Him, not the other way around, Yet He is the one calling and we are the ones avoiding, giving excuses, putting Him off.

We just can't stand in His Holy presence covered in rot. If we refuse to surrender our will we are saying, "I like my rot thank you very much. You can't have it." And God lets us keep it. But while He never looks at us with anything but love and compassion we aren't comfortable in His presence. We only feel we belong in the grave yard of our sin.  

Or we can grunt out through our brokenness and rot, "Daddy help!" And He in His power and grace and love does what we can't. He restores life to the dead man walking. He removes the stench. He wipes away the goop. He freshens the breath. He restores the mind. He makes new clothes free from filth. He brings life into us and into the relationship with Him. 

God' love is the only cure for the epidemic of dead men walking and for apathy and death in our relationship with Him. But there is a part of the cure that's on us. We have to see we need it. We have to accept His acceptance of who we, are as we are. And then we have to submit to His healing hands that clean us up and give us new life. He does the work, but we must let Him or continue to rot away and wander through life in our stink, gnashing at people around us, wondering why we feel separated from everyone.

Abba, help me to see the rot and smell the stink in my life. Help me to remember today that I don't have to hide that from You in shame, but I can run to You just as nasty as I am, without having to clean or heal in any way first. Thank You for Your faithfulness to clean away and heal as much of my body and life infected by sin as I will let You. Help me hold nothing back. I give You all of me, good and stinking, nasty, bad. Amen 

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