Time

Hey! Sorry it has been so long since I have updated you all with how the Lord has been working in my heart and life this summer! Since my last post, SO many things have happened, some good, and some maybe not so much. In general, I have just been REALLY busy! 

I cannot believe that the summer is over half-way done! I feel like it just started a few days ago! Time flies by so incredibly fast! In the past two and a half months, the Lord has really been breaking me of a lot of things. He has been revealing tendencies in my heart that I didn't even know were there, idols that I had no idea were even idols, and things in my life in general that are not Christlike. It is so hard for me, sometimes, when I am shown an area of my life that does not measure up to God's standards, to simply submit and surrender that area to Him and allow Him to change me and make me more Christlike. I have realized this summer more than ever that I have such a skewed view of God! So often I go through life thinking that my view of Him is fine, but my reactions to circumstances that He brings into my life show that, in reality, my perception of God is WAY off. I know all the right things to say and the right things to do. I know the answers. I was taught well by so many loving and patient individuals. But my focus is not where it should be. When I am going through a trial, I don't turn my gaze and focus on my amazing and loving Savior who brought the circumstance into my life. Instead, I tend to keep my focus on the circumstance and on myself. 

All this to say, the Lord has been hitting me hard this summer with my obvious lack of trust. When trials come into our lives, they are designed by my all-knowing, loving Creator God who would NEVER do anything to me simply to cause me pain. He brings these things to show me my heart and to change that heart to be more like the heart of His Son, Jesus Christ. God is good. He IS good. HE IS GOOD! I know this so well! I have told myself this and so many other truths about God so many times! But when it comes down to crunch time, I forget...or rather I refuse to believe. I refuse to stand fast to what I KNOW to be true simply because it doesn't make sense to ME. How dumb! How foolish of me, a small, insignificant creation, to look at what my magnificent maker is doing in my life and say "this doesn't make sense. You are doing it wrong!" I have been SO convicted especially this past week over my lack of trust and my pride in thinking that I know better than my GOD, Who MADE me, Who SAVED me from my sin, Who LOVES me, and Who knows EVERYTHING. I think I know better than Him? How could I? He is SO much higher than I! He is perfect, and His plan is perfect, and even if it may not make sense to my puny little mind, His mind is WAY higher than mine and it makes perfect sense to Him! Wow. I am so overwhelmed by God's goodness to me and His patience with me. I fail Him so many times, but He is still right at the same place waiting for me to realize my failure, confess it to Him, and come back to Him. What a GOOD GOD! What a LOVING God! What a Savior!

Romans 6-8 ~ Wow! What an Amazing God!!

I have been reading, studying, and meditating on Romans 6-8 this week, and it has been such an encourgaement that I felt I just HAD to share it with you all!

Paul ends chapter 5 by talking about how when we sin, God's grace is greater than our sin, and His grace abounds. So then Paul begins chapter 6 by asking, "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Of course, our answer is obviously no. Paul says that before we became children of God we were slaves to sin and obeyed our sinful passions and lusts; but now that we have been set free from sin, how can we continue to live in sin, no matter what the reason? As children of God, we are set free from sin and also enslaved to a new master: God. But this new master, God, gives us a choice to Him. This is different from our slavery to sin where we were forced to serve sin and to obey Satan: we now have a choice! And what do so many of us (including me) do with that choice? We choose to obey our sinful nature rather than to obey God! How unreasonable and illogical is that? I find myself so many times getting so frustrated with myself because, even though I now have a choice, I still continue to choose the wrong. It is then that I must realize that I have a choice to make NOW. Not a choice two hours ago or even two minutes ago, but a choice now. I have a choice every minute of every day to do right and to obey my new master, and when I make the wrong choice sometimes, I cannot look back and dwell on that wrong choice, but I MUST look at right now and make the choice to obey God right now. I find myself loosing sight of God's forgiveness and often not accepting it even though I have asked earnestly for it. How foolish of me. Anyway, that is enough rambling on that point.

Paul goes on in chapter 6 to explain that we are not to sin because we are not under the law of sin that we were once under, but we are now under grace: God's grace. What a privilege! Then Paul asks another daunting yet convicting question: "Are we to sin because we are not under the law but under grace?" Wow! This is HUGE! I have known and heard so many people who claim to be children of God say that they can do whatever they want and sin however much they please simply because they are under grace. "It's all under grace. I can just ask forgiveness later," they say. But that is not how the Christian life is to be lived! We are not to sin simply because we are already forgiven! One thought that has helped me with this is that Christ died for every sin I committed in the past, every sin I am committing right now in the present, and every sin I will commit in the future. Every sin that I commit helps nail Christ to the cross. Do I REALLY want to add to the list? Christ suffered SO much on the cross just so that I could be a child of God and not spend eternity in Hell. I should be grateful enough to live the life that He has given me for Him. I shouldn't want to live for myself, doing what I want, when I want to do it. I am so guilty of this. I often live in the "whatever Stephanie wants" mode. That is a TERRIBLE life to live! It is so unsatisfying and empty! Only living for Christ really satisfies and gives my life any purpose! I want my life to count for Christ. I want HIM to be glorified in and through my life, not me. Well, this post has suddenly gotten very long, and I have run out of time to finish it. I will consider this part one, and will finish it later!