To Honor and Obey

“My son, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you”

Proverbs 7:1 ESV

I’ve been married for about six and half months now. It’s awesome, but not really because of me. I’m nothing special. I have red hair, but that’s about it. On the other hand, my wife is fantastic! She bakes and cleans like a fiend, is the most beautiful drop of sunshine I’ve ever seen, and she has a soothing way about her. I love her so much; I’d do just about anything for her. But that’s not all of it. That’s not all of it… there is something more.

I think that that something is that we spend time together and do things together and do things for each other. We participate in life together. I’ve heard for years that my relationship with Christ should be like that. We – the church – should be His Bride and He the Bridegroom and I thought “Oh! What a wonderful picture of how we as Christians should live our lives” and left it at that. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? Just because two people are in the same room doesn’t mean they doing life together or living intimately. There must be something more to our relationship with Christ.

If I love my wife, I’ll listen and treasure what she has to say. I’ll remember to pick up my clothes or make the bed or take out the trash. Certainly I will forget sometimes, and I won’t always tell or show her how much I love her, but I will always come back to her and serve and tell her “I love you” and train myself to do these things as second nature. How much more I should be doing the same thing with Christ! He is always present with me; His Spirit dwells within my heart; He is my redeemer! Surely if I can learn the second nature of marriage I can learn the first nature of Christhood. Should it be anymore difficult? Do I make it more difficult than it ought to be? What a simple request from a God who has poured out such an expensive perfume over me: to keep His words and treasure his commandments. Are his other commands so costly, so difficult?

I pray that we, as his Church and as a people, will stand up in devotion to Christ rather than remain his demanding, reluctant, and adulterous bride.

Growth or destruction?

You know there is some truth to the sentiment that ignorance is bliss. When we don’t know that we are fat, lazy, and close to death, we are perfectly content to sit on our couch and eat donuts and watch TV all day. When we don’t realize that we are hopelessly lost, destitute, and condemned to death, we are happy – nay, eager – to continue with our self destructive behavior.

There are times that I wish it had not been made known to me all that is truly required from Christ’s disciples. I could be lazily drifting in whatever state I wanted. What a heresy… I don’t mean it. I would rather bind myself to the freedom of the cross. It’s just the pains of training my self for righteousness. You know, it’s awful funny that we think that conforming to the image of Christ should be easy. Athletes know that if they want to be good that it takes long hard hours of vigorous training. The military understands the need to practice so that its soldiers are ready for battle. But I don’t want to write my school assignments on Saturday because it requires me to work hard before anything is “due.” I don’t want to fast because I get hungry and why should I have to not eat something?

I’ll be very glad to be done with conviction and even more enthusiastic about entering into perfection. I want to do well with the here and now, but I also want to be with Jesus. Heck! If I could be with Jesus right now, even without reaching perfection, I would. But this is when my true nature comes out I suppose. This is when I am given the opportunity to grow in perseverance and, in turn, character. One more chance for Christ to cut away at the filth I’ve tried to clothe myself with.

Worthiness

I know I don't ever write anything. I suppose because I know my self and how much help I need. I guess I should do more of it at appropriate times. There is a certain danger to it though. As a believer in Jesus Christ, all I say and do is examined and dissected and judged. There is nothing for it: it will always happen. And so I pray for grace and mercy because I am still in dire need of saving.

I had to write a reflection sort of journal thing and something struck me;

What a waste it is not to heed God and give up everything. What a terrible cost it is not to come to Him and throw our whole selves on His altar. It is not worth holding on to sin. God is worth letting go of everything.

I don't really know where you are, but I know that I am here on the other side of not throwing all of me onto God. I'm finding the cost of defying his call for complete repentance. Rest assured, hiding only lets the wound fester and consume the whole limb. Eventually it even poisons the whole body. Why not stop and see God, the one who created time, who loves you exactly where you are and throw yourself into his waiting arms letting everything else fall at his feet?

I don't remember a whole lot about my very early childhood. But I know that when I wanted to be held, anything that got in my way was thrown down so that I could hold on to my father and he to me. How I wish you can learn from little children and throw off everything that gets in between you and Gods loving embrace. It's just not worth trying to hold on to anything but God.