prone to wander...

...Lord i feel it, prone to leave the God i love.

i find myself constantly, slowly, unknowingly moving "things" into my line of vision. filling my time. consuming my heart. there is that constant battle within. society vs. scripture. feelings vs. faith. flesh vs. spirit. we all have this tendency within ourselves to search for identity/security/acceptance horizontally (among the world) for what we can only get vertically (direct from God).

what are we using to identify ourselves?

what defines who i am?

a career?

my church?

my husband?

our children?

my looks?

...success?

it should be Christ. Christ alone.

this quote from Paul David Tripp says it all too perfectly:

If I am seeking to get identity from you, I will watch you too closely, listen to you too intently, and need you too fundamentally...And because I am watching you too closely, I will become acutely aware of your weaknesses and failures. I will become overly critical, frustrated, disappointed, hopeless, and angry. I will be angry not because you are a sinner but because you have failed to deliver the one thing I seek from you: identity. But none of us will ever get the well-being that comes from knowing who we are from our relationships. Instead we will be left with damaged relationships filled with hurt, frustration and anger.” 

once we begin to look vertically (to God) for our identity, we can finally start living a life full of joy. no, not happiness, but pure joy. we can have joy through unhappiness. we can have peace through turmoil. it comes from the Holy Spirit. it comes from seeking God first in our lives. it comes when we decide that pleasing God is more important than pleasing people: our parents, our spouse, our pastor, our friends...our kids...or even ourselves.

do you believe Jesus died for your sins? do you believe he died to give you hope for an eternity in heaven? well, yes, He did...but what about the here? the now? let me introduce you to what Tripp calls the "nowism" of the gospel. the good news that Jesus came down to earth to sacrifice His life, out of love, and so that we can have a life-transforming relationship with God. here. now.

the nowism of the gospel. it's alive and breathing and moving...and changing lives.

we cannot live in our past: leafing through the pages of our lives. dwelling on conversations we had. things we wished we would've said. things we never did.

we cannot worry about our future: conjure up scenarios. worry about things that are out of our control. play out every possible reaction or scenario. what we will say. what we would do. the what-ifs can be killer.

if life is a battlefield of the mind, then we must take control of our thoughts, feelings & actions. let's stop letting our feelings rule our lives and instead allow our faith to guide us. through Christ we have the power to overcome. through Christ we have the influence of the Holy Spirit. think about it: the same Holy Spirit that brought the Son of God back to life from the dead...lives inside you & me...if we have invited him in. wow.

we are in charge of the here & now. think about it: our here & now dictates our soon-to-be past. our here & now is fulfilling our coming future.  let's seek & accept God's perfect plan for our lives. let's let His amazing Grace transform us along the way. 

let's live in the nowism of the gospel.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light

1 Peter 2:9

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, 

in accordance with his pleasure and will.

Ephesians 1:4-5

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, 

which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Ephesians 2:10

But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." 

1 Samuel 16:7

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might 

become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21