Rock Bottom

The phrase "Rock Bottom" is often used to describe the lowest emotional and spiritual point in a person's life.  It has often been said that when a person is addicted to a substance they must hit rock-bottom before they can begin to recover.  Whether this is actually true or not (and I doubt it is) rock-bottom is a dangerous place to be.  For rock-bottom has been the scene of many desperate acts, including suicide.

So how does one arrive at this dark night of the soul?  In a word, choices.  A person's life is the sum total of the choices made.  If these choices are based on sound moral judgments of right and wrong, rock-bottom may be somewhat avoided, for a time.  Yet, if these choices tend to cast off moral restraint, rock-bottom may come more quickly. 

So what makes rock-bottom so bottomish?  The person at rock-bottom sees for the first time that they have been deceived.  They thought the choices they were making would lead to happiness and fulfillment, but now they realize they played the fool, and the shame of being so personally responsible for where they are is more than they can bear. 

Maybe your rock-bottom experience came from the choice to use drugs, or to have pre-marital sex, or to embrace selfishness, or any number of other choices.  Or maybe your rock-bottom is just realizing that every choice you make, good or bad, seems incapable of bringing any real joy or lasting fulfillment.  This sounds a lot like the Bible in Ecclesiastes 1:14, "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind."

So what choices do you have a rock-bottom?  Its often here that a person begins to think seriously about God and faith.  I suspect that's why God the Son (Jesus) spent so much time ministering to people who were at the bottom.  People like prostitutes and thieves, out and out sinners.  But what I find so comforting is that even though God is personally offended by sin, Jesus never condemned a sinner who was humble enough to look up from the bottom and see that God had provided a Savior.

So what does this Savior offer for those at rock-bottom?  In a word, freedom.  The first step to being free from the guilt of your choices is recognizing that even though your sin has caused pain and grief for you and those around you, that God still loves you.  He loves you enough to come and take your guilt and its consequences upon Himself when he died on a cross.  He then was buried and raised back to life. 

The choice to make is one of faith.  Faith will allow you to turn away from a life of sinful choices and have Christ's death, burial and resurrection attributed to you.  The Bible says in Romans 6:3-4, "Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?  Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life."

In other words, you can die now and in eternity because of your sin, or you can accept by faith that God died in your place so that you could live now and in eternity.  You can have all your sinful choices forgiven by God, be lifted up from rock-bottom, and begin living a new life free from guilt, full of joy, and guided by Christ.