The Faith Credit Line

            So, it hasn’t been the best year of my life, quite honestly, I’m ready to welcome 2013 with open arms.  When life isn’t going my way I’m inclined to cut myself slack, it begins with little things like “I deserve this candy bar.”  It progresses to “I really need to sleep in today; I’ll go to church next week.”  It can even continue to cheapening my prayers to a simple, “You know what I need God.” I keep telling myself I still have faith, I still believe Jesus is my savior. However, each of these moments of cutting myself slack is like running up the balance on a credit card, the individual purchases seem reasonable and harmless but the next thing you know you’ve maxed out your credit card.  These are the deceptions that Satan employs to pull us away from the Christ-centered life.  When we come to our senses, we are so far from the path of life we feel powerless and ashamed (more of Satan’s tactics).  We come back to God with that hangdog expression and he looks upon us with love and forgives.

            How blessed are we that we can never max out the credit line of the love of Christ?  Not that we should keep on sinning but recognizing our sin and knowing that God still loves us and is our ever present hope.  It is a life long struggle this battle between the spirit-centered life and the flesh centered life. Delayed gratification has never been my strong suit, yet that is exactly where my focus should be, on eternity.  Keep up the good fight my friends; we never fight it alone.

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

(A special thank you to my reader Harley, God is at work in you!)




Posted by

Comments

  1. AnonymousAugust 15, 2012 at 10:14 AM

    Well said. I love your writing, Jody. Keep 'em coming!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JodyAugust 20, 2012 at 7:34 AM

      Thank you for reading! Trying to get back in the writing groove.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How are you?

Image
            When I wake, one of the first things I do is say, “Good morning God!” Some days are more enthusiastic than others. When I greet another human being, I usually follow that greeting with, “how are you?” This morning it occurred to me that I don’t ask God how he is. I have been contemplating this idea, how are you God? Obviously, given his attributes of omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience it is easy to follow the train of thought that he has everything in check. Despite that; I think of him in human terms and I can’t help but feel he is; not mad but disappointed (cringe). When he looks at creation, like a parent gazing on the wreckage of a kid’s toy room, wouldn’t there be disappointment?             As I contemplated that, my meandering mind led me to consider guilt. The guilt that leads to the disappointment of others. Every culture I have known lays claim t...
Read more

I Don't Understand

Image
              I was walking with my good friend Patti this morning as we do most Saturdays, and we were discussing dependance on God versus a bank account when from out of my coat pocket my phone speaks and says, “I don’t understand.” In the moment it made us chuckle, but it is so appropriate because the phone (a worldly item) can’t understand that kind of faith. The world doesn’t understand that kind of faith. I have often heard stories of men and women of faith totally dependent on God, prayers being answered in supernatural ways at the very last minute. (Read up on George Mueller who ran an orphanage depending entirely on God). I desire that type of faith because try as I might, at times I still lean on my bank accounts and fear can creep in when my funds are low.             There is no way to completely understand the love of God, His ways are incomprehensible to the...
Read more

Masterpiece

Image
              As a young person, I was fond of painting, not great at it but reasonable. I set it aside when I fell in love and got married. In these days of isolation I needed to find some other ways to occupy myself other than baking and decided to get back to my paint brushes.   To get used to handling the brushes again I got myself a paint by number,             If you have never tried one of these let me give you a little insight. You receive a canvas with an image divided up into numbered areas and little pots of paint with corresponding numbers. Then you begin a sort of scavenger hunt trying to fill in all the spots of a particular number. Sounds simple enough, however some of these areas are so tiny they are easily overlooked. The tiny spots are important though, they give that little flourish that can draw the eye or round out an object.    ...
Read more