Good Tuesday morning! Peanut butter toast can stick in the throat a bit and a good mug of coffee can help with that. Sometimes good advice can stick in the throat in a manner of speaking too. We don't want to hear it, but we get it anyway, and the advice can make us a little defensive. The commands of our Lord can work the same way. We know that the words of the Bible, God's word, are for our own good, but we want to do what we think is best. Have you ever come to the list of folks who will not be in Heaven and found yourself on the list? Well, not by name of course, but some time in your life you have qualified for that list. Thank God for the grace of Jesus Christ!
A person could give me some good advice for my little problem. "Don't eat peanut butter toast in the morning, knucklehead." Right, donuts are way better! "No, that's not quite what I had in mind..." We can take the good advice and replace it with even worse actions. If you ever wondered whether you had any talent at all, look no further: we all seem to have a talent for taking good advice and making it into a worse situation. You would pity, perhaps even be disgusted by an alcoholic who gave up beer and took up with hard liquor instead. However, with a bit of careful looking and the help of the Holy Spirit, you can probably find an area of your life where you did something quite similar. Perhaps a person gave up pornography, but kept the fantasies and worked on making them better in his mind until he was even more lost in an imagined world of fornication and adultery. Another may have given up a life of dishonesty, but now she will not believe anything that another person says. We tend to heal our first sin with something worse when we try to do our own healing. As fallen creatures in a sin-stained world, we don't know the right way to turn without our Lord Jesus.
In Christ we turn first to Him for healing. You or I may not notice immediate healing in some condition, but Jesus has heard our cry for help. I have sins that I have struggled with for years, as does most anyone who has ever called Jesus "Lord". I have faith that the struggle will be for my own good because of the promise of Christ. Do I wish that Jesus had immediately healed all of my faults at salvation? Sure, and I'm quite sure that you feel the same about your life. However, faith tells me that Jesus has it all under control and that my struggle is working toward the sanctification that he has promised. I am far from perfect right now. The list of those who will not be in Heaven might even cause me to gulp and ask forgiveness one more time from God the Father. But the Spirit tells me to stand up, Jesus has paid for my sins, and God has forgiven me. Every time I fall, I am told to try again and keep on trying until the great and glorious day comes when Jesus will bring me home.
Have another new day in Christ; keep on trying!
Bucky
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