Obedience

OBEDIENCE
This is a word that I have a tough time with. For as long as I can remember I have had a problem following authority, my peak of rebellion was probably in high school when I was fascinated with the idea of anarchy. I believe that this anti authoritarian mind set lives in all of us to some extent. Here is an example of my unwillingness to submit to authority, I was at work one day, and I saw a sign that said wet paint Do Not Touch; now had there been no sign I would have no temptation whatsoever to touch that railing but since the sign was there I wanted so bad to touch that wet paint. Just one little touch I thought to myself that won’t hurt anything, it’s probably dry by now anyway just touch it, after much contemplation reason won out and I resisted the temptation. But this was just a wet paint sign; can you imagine when it comes to something bigger like God’s word? I never understood why I couldn’t go out and get drunk or stoned and just like the wet paint sign instead of the rule bringing obedience it made me want to go out there and do it all the more. Unfortunately this is the way we are because of our fallen state and it goes all the way back to Adam and Eve, but there is hope, however it is NOT in ourselves. It comes in the God-man Jesus Christ, who paid the penalty for all those disobediences you have ever or will ever commit. After you accept the free gift of salvation provided by God in His son Jesus Christ, God’s Holy Spirit will come into your heart and instead of rebellion to His word now He will replace this rebellion with a want to obey His word. I know that may sound crazy but it is true for example, I never really wanted to give up getting drunk but after I got saved and gave my life to Jesus HE began to take away the desire to drink altogether. He doesn’t always work just like this but He does always work, our part in this equation is simple; surrender. Although as a Christian, there are some things that I don’t understand but that God calls me to be obedient to and while it is good to question and to try to understand it is important to remember that God is God and we are not. He knows what is best for us at all times, though it may not seem like the best thing at the time He is working ALL things together for good to those who love Him and are the called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28).

Thank God!

Today is a new day! YAY! Lord I thank you for today, for today is the day you have made, and your mercies are new everyday. God put this on my heart this morning, that every day is a new day and in this day are many opportunities to start afresh. My attitude lately has not been the greatest, I have this shocking tendency towards complaining, and not just lately I would say I have had it since I was taken out of my mother’s womb. Just think about it when you are a baby you cry and what was this crying but complaining without words. I think about all my complaints and most of them if I really stop to think about them are complaints against the Lord. (Why cant this be different, Why cant traffic move any faster, When am I going to get paid more, Why is the weather like this blah blah blah blah blah) Instead of wasting my breath on complaining against the Lord rather I should take the time he has given to me and pray for others or to praise Him for all that He has done in my life. God is good! It takes me getting my eyes off of my current situation and placing my eyes on Him to give me peace. Each of us, everyday, has many opportunities to start over, yet we choose to forsake these. This is a new day and my prayer for myself and for others is that we would start afresh, we certainly cannot change the past but we always have the present. Don’t, as I so often did, look to the past and say well I have already gone this far and rebelled against God for this long, so might as well take it to this day as well. No, THIS is the day the Lord has made and as long as we have this breath in our lungs there is hope for the future. Get right with the Lord before it is too late. Lord change my heart THIS day!

For it is by Grace you have been saved...

My heart rejoices in this fact. Praise the Lord that He has been so gracious as to save a sinner like me. I am absolutely sure that on my own two feet without the Lord’s provisions that I am not only lacking and destitute, but I am completely and utterly bankrupt. I tried for many, many years to be righteous in of myself, and my answer to people that would ask me if I was a good person was well I’m not perfect but I know that I am better than this person over here or that group over there. My standard was always based on a mathematical type of averaging, if you will. I would look at all my friends and be like well I am doing a lot better then most of these guys on the “righteousness scale”. This scale was based mostly on things I didn’t do for example I might get drunk every weekend but at least I wasn’t doing cocaine every weekend, or sleeping around every weekend; I figured I deserved some righteousness points for these things. Surely if I racked up enough of these points by the time I died then how could God keep me out of heaven, after all I was a shoe in. After I committed my life to Jesus I soon learned of my total depravity and my inability to offer Him anything in way of righteousness. As Jesus says to the Saducees (a group of religiously righteous) you do err because you do not understand the righteousness of God. This was my problem before, you see I thought that God was grading man on a curve and whoever got a 70 % or higher was in; what I failed to realize is that Heaven (the place where the Lord dwells) is not merely a college who only accepts the top 10 % or even top 5 %. Rather this is Heaven, it is perfect. The Lord’s standard is perfection. DISQUALIFIED? Don’t feel bad we all are, but as Jesus said, “with God ALL things are possible”. The upshot of this truth is that we are all human and we all fall short none of us, until we have accepted Christ, are in any better situation then any body else. Accepting Christ means that we accept His perfection and atoning death and resurrection on our behalf, knowing that we ALL fall short and cannot make ourselves righteous no matter how hard we try. This salvation is a gift from God and is NOT earned. Go to the cross, go to Jesus and He will give you rest for your weary souls. Talk to Him.

I fight with God.

Sometimes I just want it all to end. The fake laughs, the putting a face on to meet the faces, sometimes this makes me physically ill. My life is what I have made it to be: a mess. No one else has made my life the way it is, therefore I have no one to blame but myself. The Lord is faithful ALWAYS He will take the years which the locust has eaten and transform them into something beautiful. However, my depravity is so severe that sometimes I refuse to follow what the Lord has for me. When I do this (not that it doesn’t happen often, it does) I create twisted piles of filth and mess. Intertwined in these sticky webs there is me struggling and striving but yet just making things 100 times worse for myself. It reminds me of Saul in Acts breathing out murderous threats to the church and when the Lord comes to him he says to Saul Is it hard to kick against the cattle prods; literally telling Saul that he had been fighting the Lord this whole time. I fight God all the time WHY? I know that I am wrong, and that it will be easier if I just follow what God has for me. Still yet, I remain stubborn weaving my web of self deception and delusion. But this story does not end with me weaving my tangled webs to my death. On the contrary even when I, a child of God have decided to go the wrong way, God is still His faithful self. He corrects me and sets me on the path eternal, His faithfulness is not dependent on anything. PHEW! This is GRACE. I need to remember that we live by faith and not by sight; though the circumstances are completely impossible the Lord is Faithful.

The good life!

I woke up this morning with an incredible thought in my mind, a very simple thought, yet still incredible: I exist. WOW! Yeah, I know I am not the brightest crayon in the box, but for some reason this morning it seemed very profound to me. Following this thought I came to the realization that I exist ONLY because God exists, if no God, then no me; no nothing. I personally know this God, only because He first made Himself known to me by showing me how much He loves me. How you might ask? Well, by sending His only son to die for my sins: Jesus. He is almighty, all knowing, ever present, all good, all loving, and all righteous. Because He is all these attributes and I am exactly NONE of these, having Him in my life creates in me the good life. I know that there are people who would completely disagree with the fact that the God revealed in the pages of the bible is good. I, too often doubt the goodness of God when I read of certain things in scripture or when I am going through strife and struggles in my own life. But, as I stated before I am NOT by any means all knowing, almighty etc. Therefore, I am not qualified to make such a statement, what I see is just a small fraction of the big picture. I cannot even count how many times in my life I thought that a situation or event was the worst thing in the world then days weeks or months later I saw that even in this 'horrible' time good came from it. It's like looking at one pixel of a bigger picture sometimes that particular pixel may appear to be dark and unappealing but then when we pull back we see the whole beautiful picture of a sunset in Tahiti. God is good!

Continuation of About me...

Testimony Time:
About 5 years ago I was a different person. Normal kid by America’s standards I moved out to California from Texas in order to pursue the California dream: film. Not acting, but directing. I used to go up to USC where one of my good friends attended the prestigious USC film school. We would drink and party what seemed like every weekend. After about 3/4 of freshman year of college (I went to community college down in O.C.) I started to get lonely, so as any American man does when he gets lonely find a girl. Well I wasn't too good with pick up lines so I went online to try to meet someone. And meet someone I did, her name was Jessica; sure she was a lot younger but that didn’t matter to me. After being together for about 3 months spending everyday together I moved in to her family’s house. Well I got kicked out of my house, seems my Dad didn’t take so kindly to her being so young and all. After living with Jessica and her family for almost a year I started going to church on Sundays pretty regularly. However this was just something I did on Sundays and the rest of the week I lived just like I had lived the rest of my life. One Sunday after church, I was driving to my job at the beer store and I got into a pretty bad car accident. I walked away but my car was totaled. I had no idea what I was supposed to do now. I couldn’t get to work or the beach, I didn’t have any money saved up and I was living with my 17 year old girlfriend. God used this position in my life to bring me to a place where I would finally listen to Him. I now had a lot of spare time and I began to read the pages of the New Testament. God poured out into me understanding and for the first time the bible made sense. I committed my life to the Lord sometime after that I don’t remember the exact day but I know that it was one of those nights that I stayed up praying. God began making changes in my life, where I was too proud to ever apologize or admit that I might have been wrong I now had a soft heart. But He didn't stop changing me there it is a process that won't be over until I hear the angels singing.