Friday, January 6th, 2006
beggars
Have you ever felt that you were not adequate enough for God’s grace?
This came up in my mind because in the new years, we all make some sort of resolution. We set goals for ourselves. Morals goals, for some of us, but no matter how hard we try – somehow by the end of the year that goal has become some kind of horrible failure.
“I promise to read my Bible everyday” – that was mine last year. It’s always easy at first, because you still have that resolve, but soon as the year drags out, we forget. We do stuff like – I’ll read twice the amount tomorrow when we miss a day. And before you know it at the end of the month your books behind where you wanted to be. It’s always hard to catch up once you’ve started falling. Sometimes I feel like I’ve fallen too far to be helped by anyone, never mind God. God would be ashamed of my actions, breaking promises is something a man (or woman) shouldn’t take lightly.
I’d come home from a sleepover feeling like a criminal. As if I’d injured God that night, or even more myself. Sometimes I just can’t bear to deal with myself, well I don’t know how long ago this was but it’s a very unpleasant feeling. Why should God forgive us?
I can forgive a kid that does something wrong once, okay twice. But after the third time I would expect him to learn. But we as humans fall to our sinful natures so easily. Thinking bad thoughts, lying, swearing, you know all that jazz. You tell yourself, “ok, next time it won’t happen again” – but it does. Then you try again and again and again. Until you feel like God’s given more than enough chance, and that he would be ashamed of you as a Father.
I’ve had that feeling before, I don’t get it often but it happens. And when it does, it feels like I owe God something much more. Owe him for all the wrongs I’ve done. Like an analogy I got from a book – it’s like God is a loan shark, and all I want to do is hide from him.
You feel like you have to earn back all the sin you’ve done. To redeem yourself. Sometimes we as humans can’t accept the concept of something being “free” it’s like it doesn’t exist.
But God’s grace is free, but we still feel bad when we take it from Him. It’s almost like we don’t want it, we’d rather make it on our own.
And that’s the folly of human Pride. We think that we are above charity. Sure we’d love to give charity to others, but how often do we like to be put in the spotlight and be a charity? I don’t think at any point in our lives we’d want that, just because it’s part of human nature. Right? (It was like the last episode of the OC where that dude wouldn’t take Marissa’s charity) But in the end, we know there isn’t a way out on our own, we dig ourselves deeper.
Pride is such a fickle thing. What are we to think that we, mere humans, are above God! That we don’t need His charity.
If you cannot accept God’s love, then you can never return the Love God has given you. By accepting God’s love then you can start falling in love with him.
You will never feel righteous or clean through self-discipline, but you can by accepting God’s will.
After all, God says “Your life is not your own, It has been bought with a price” and a very expensive price might I add.
In exchange for our humility and willingness to accept the charity of God, we are given a kingdom! And a beggars kingdom is better than a proud man’s delusion.
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