Amazing Grace

Hey ya'll I just wanted to write a little blurb on some Truth that has really been breathed into my soul these past couple of days. I've come to find that my anxiety over my faith and my relationship with Christ rested in the fact that I was focusing on what Christ could do for me and not what I was meant to do for Christ. Do not misunderstand me, I know that it is by faith and not works that I am saved. However as Britney pointed out in our early monday morning meeting that to work in faith for the Lord reaps a lot of blessings and truth that our Lord wants to give us. So what am I trying to say? I've found that when I focus on loving others and focus finding their beautiful fruits of the Spirit that I truly "see the face of God" (quote taken from Les Miserables). All this was only solidified when I finished reading the book, "Humility: True Greatness" by C. J. Mahaney.

"On one occasion, a relative of Dave (dying from cancer) was visiting, a man who was not a Christian. As he watched Sharon caring for Dave and thought about Dave's relative youth and the children he would leave behind, anger seemed to well up from within him - anger directed at the God whom Dave and Sharon were professing to believe in.

He asked Sharon, "Why aren't you angry?"

She turned to him and answered with the true of the gospel: "Dave deserved hell for his sins, just like you and me, and yet God, in His mercy, forgave him because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Dave is going to heaven," she said. "How could I be angry at God for taking him to heaven?" (Mahaney, 2005, pp. 150-151)

This passage sent chills up my spine. The posture I must/need/will take is humility towards my God. I feel so incredibly humbled and realize just how amazing blessed I am not only to be alive in the Lord but to be given so much on top of that, friends, family, good health, this internship, life (thanksgiving could not have come at a better time!), good food, college... I could go on and on. Yet, I am a sinner, I deserve to die for my sin, my ugly sin that keeps me from being with Christ. The Cross has so much more meaning for me then I will ever truly be able to grasp. All I can think to do it follow the God who has set me free from pride (though I know I will regress while still on this earth). My heart is singing praises right now, if only I could express the holy, inexhaustible joy of knowing that I deserve to die but Christ died for me, so that I didn't have too. The grace that God has for his children is beautiful.

But here to I can relate to Paul's lament:

"21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!" Romans 7:21-25

This is Truth. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

Lord,
Thank you for the many blessing you have poured out on such undeserving children, your love is holy. I pray Thanksgiving for your grace and that I may delight in it for the rest of my days. Your face is beautiful to me. I pray for the discipline of humility.

Amen.

Love,
Sister Leslie

PS: I realize my little blurb turned into a big blurb. :)