I am so grateful today that I am fully, accepted by God and loved, completely, totally, 100%, no matter what I do, have done or will do. No matter how stupid my hair looks, cause I forgot to look in the mirror on my way to the grocery store, or how completely frumpy and unfashionable I look, despite currently living in the "mainline". It's so fun to laugh at myself now and not care what people think of me, cause I know how wonderful God thinks I am!! I guess I spent too much time in the past worried about other people's impression of me, what a waste of time and energy!! Maybe I spent too much time criticizing and evaluating others as well, a pasttime I care not to continue!! The more I dwell on God's love for me and his grace to me the more I want to give all of myself to HIm -this is truly freeing, wonderful and dare I say easy!! After all he says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." So, all these years I have been a struggling Christian, striving to practice the Spiritual disciplines and be a good wife, a good mom, take good care of my home, be a good friend, reach out to people, serve in the church, ....and the list goes on. All those things loomed large over me -how can I do all of it and get it right?! Does anyone hear me on this one? Now I just wake up every day, and say "God what do you have for me today?" -surprisingly his list is much simpler, often there is only relax, chill out and enjoy me! (of course feeding the kids and making certain their lives are not at risk is in there too!) Isn't God amazingly kind, he doesn't expect or demand perfection or high performance of us! And all these years I have been a Christian thinking I am just not getting it right!!!! Well, I wasn't, ha, all I had to "do" was understand his love and grace! How totally cool is that, I mean how refreshing, how freeing!! Yahoo, I just want to dance and jump and do flips(although I won't really try to), or run around in a huge meadow, and sing at the top of my lungs!
My desire for anyone who reads this is, that you wouldn't miss the grace of God! Whatever your current life circumstances, or view of yourself, or others view of you, I would want you to grasp the truth of the gospel, not only has God redeemed you(or maybe your not saved yet, but he can, will, and wants to) he loves you totally and accepts you for YOU!!
2 comments:
I'm surprised no one has commented on this one. This is amazing. I love your excitement for grace! I get so easily entangled in trying to earn God's favor or prove my sincerity. Everything in my mind can say to me that I must not rest, I must work.
I thoroughly agree with Paul Anderson-Walsh that Christians think that the salvation gift is dependent upon our valiant efforts at being good. Sometimes I don't want to try. A lot of times I don't. And since I've come to grace, I don't pray as near as much. But when I do pray; it's real. I don't read my Bible as near as much, but now it's real. I don't do a lot of things as much, but I'm more real.
I appreciate your honesty. I understand your struggle, and I think it can be a mind battle often times to not slip back to self effort, but His grace more and more prevails, don't you think! Don't underestimate the value of being real!!
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