The past week and a half I have been really struggling with what to post on my blog. I am working through some disappointments and frustrations right now. I think we all go through that. The moments, days or even season where life just doesn’t look the way that you had planned and imagined.
It is hard. I mean REALLY hard.
My problem is that I get bogged down in my works. It is so easy to become accusatory toward God when we hold Him to our standard of quid pro quo. Not only am I angry at Him, I get judgmental and hard against people. I begin to measure how they are living their lives and if they are truly deserving of the good coming their way. I am envious and resentful.
What do I mean by “works”? Well, I think it varies for people. My opinion is that whatever actions we engage in to forcefully move God’s hand or will is “works”. Why do I use this interpretation? It is because there are things that people do out of genuine love and belief in scripture that should not be seen as self-serving or self-promoting. For instance, fasting. Some people fast prayerfully and obediently in accordance with The Bible. Someone else may use it to try and force God to move or act on their behalf. So, I think that lumping actions regardless of context into works vs. faithful acts is wrong.
I realized my reliance on works when I found that my conversations with friends and family are peppered with the phrase “I am DOING all the right things! Why is this happening?” My prayers also contain this complaint. Why is it that when I am praying, reading The Bible, listening to sermons, etc., my life still is not going the way I had hoped?
Because that is not why I am supposed to do the “right” things. I am to do them out of love, out of a desire to be faithful. When I act in ways to elicit a desired response from God, I am attempting to manipulate Him. Newsflash: God can’t be manipulated. When my good behaviors and good deeds don’t produce my outcomes, I want to stop doing them. I’m done. I tried, it didn’t work and I am tired of it. How unfaithful and unloving to God.
I went to Him about this, I repented of my attitude, of my manipulation. I confessed that I only wanted specific answers to prayer to look exactly like I wanted them to. I never left Him any room to meet me in a variety of ways where I would still be grateful and loving.
Then, God told me this isn’t a season of testing, but a season of correcting. Discipline. Not a fun word. Not what I wanted to hear. But then I realize discipline is a loving act of a loving parent. In that moment I knew God loved me.
I told God I welcome His correction and I really want to live free and not counting my works against His responses. And the answer was so simple. Grace. The gift that requires not much else but faith.
In his letters, or Epistles, Paul talks a lot about grace. Grace and faith. Grace feels really easy. Almost TOO easy. We accept it by faith and with grace comes God’s blessings. His blessings include help to get us through hard times (2 Corinthians 12:9). It also gives the ability to be saved (Ephesians 2:8-9). There is so much to learn about grace.
What I learned about it is that I had not accepted the gift of grace.
I will need God to help me receive the gift that He is giving me. I need His help to remove the mindset that my actions lead to His movement. I have to believe I deserve His grace and then not let it be in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:10).
So, that is going to be my project for a while. To leave behind “doing the right thing” out of a sense of entitlement to loving God the right way out of a place of grace. Pray for me!
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