I don't know if you remember, but after Obama was elected in 2008, he left a vacant seat in the Senate and according to law, the governor of Illinois got to select a replacement. His name was Rod Blagojevitch.
Gov. Blagojevitch saw his chance to make some money or make some political capital. He began to work behind the scenes to sell the Senate seat. One of his cronies, Scofield, was shocked enough that he taped some of his phone calls with the governor, who subsequently was convicted of and is now in jail. Here is one of the juicier phone calls.
WARNING… profanity.
So after all this came out, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News we're all running reports on how terribly he was and how shocked everyone was… then one day while I was watching one of these reports over lunch I realized… I AM ROD BLAGOJEVITCH
My affair had come out about four months prior. When I had reflected on all I had done to in my lifemy wife... I had lied to her. I had planned things in secret behind her back. I had betrayed her. I had maybe not done things on a corruption or a financial scale. But I had let my sinful man run rampant just as bad as Gov. Blagojevitch. But when people looked on my life from the outside, the disconnect between who I was claiming to be publicly and who I actually was out of the public eye was massive. No less than Rod Blagojevitch.
If you're honest with yourself, you have the exact same capacity as me or as Rod. If you make one small compromise, and then make another, and then make another… soon you are at a place, living in sin, that you never thought you would be. The outside perception of you and the inside reality of you would be massively disconnected.
I am lucky enough (actually blessed enough) to have people in my life who help me stay accountable to the man that God has called me to be. Not that I ever envision doing what I did before (and not that I'm prideful about it), but God calls me to a life of more than just avoiding sin. In striving to be the man/husband/dad/friend that God is calling me to be, I have accountability guys in my life. I have mentors, and I have 4 or 5 Reminders that go off on my phone every day.
Even with all this, I still have to choose every day to walk in the way of truth and light.
My hope for you (and me) today is that we wouldn't ever think that we are above doing what Rod Blagojevitch or any other broken sinful person did.
“We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.”
