Demand Justice -NOT

No one chooses hell… do they?

Clearly God and I have different thoughts and ways; it’s my everyday struggle to let go of mine in favor of His.1  When I am cut off in traffic my natural reaction is not to bless the person and yet that is what God commands me to do.2  3  When I’m wrongly accused, I suffer, sleepless nights, playing over and over the circumstances to confirm the offending person’s guilt and my innocence.  The churning arguments justify all of the enemy’s suggested retaliatory tactics that rapidly fill my head.  Soon I’m more miserable than before and the only solution I want is Justice!  Where is the justice when I’m wronged?  What am I supposed to do?  I can’t even get a peaceful nights sleep!

My Complaint, My prayer, My Understanding: Lord, they wronged me and have stolen my peace!!  What am I supposed to do?  What??  Lord, how can I forgive, don’t you know I was wrongly acc…  oh yeah, I guess you were wrongly accused too… but, you’re God!  Stephan?  Oh yeah, he forgave those who stoned him didn’t he?4  Yeah, he was a man just like me.  No, this hasn’t cost me my life… okay, so what you’re saying is I need to forgive, huh?5  Yeah, I know you forgave me, yeah, I can see how your forgiveness of my sins might be seeds in my heart.  Lord, I do want to love like you do but, it’s hard.  Oh, this is the pain of loving… wait, I missed that can you say it again?  You’re saying there is joy, coming?  What??  You endured the cross because of the joy set before you?6  What joy can there be when someone takes your life?  What do you mean they didn’t take it from you?  They purposely killed you.  No? You laid your life down?7  Wait, so let me get this straight, the joy comes from laying down your life for another, because love removes the barrier of relationship that sin created.  Okay, I can’t disagree that death would hinder relationship.  Yes, I want eternal life.  So, you died in my place that I could live for an eternity in relationship with the Father and you along with everyone in heaven?8  I thought you died just to keep me out of hell, I guess I really didn’t think about a relationship with you.  What do you mean, “How will I know I want to spend an eternity with you if I don’t get to know you?” of course I want to spend an eternity in heaven, I mean who wants to go to hell?  No one chooses hell… do they?

Love My Wife?

I received a wonderful revelation from the Lord this morning.  A call to be the husband He created me to be:

Ephesians 5:25-30  Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

The countenance of my wife reflects my love for her.

Romans 8:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Who / what shall separate my wife from my love?  Shall hardship or persecution?

Romans 8:38-39 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If I love my wife like Christ loved the church, will she be persuaded that nothing will separate her from the love of God which is in me?

I have utterly failed to fulfill the call of my Lord and Savior to love.

My Prayer:  Lord, please forgive me for being selfish, for setting myself up as an idol and neglecting your call upon my life.  I have discounted the work Jesus completed on the cross by not expressing it to my wife.  Please forgive me.  Thank you for your example of love.  Through your Holy Spirit teach me to love.  Search me and reveal the hindrances to love and give me the grace to lay them all at your feet as a personal sacrifice of my will.  That I may love you with my whole heart, my entire soul, and all of my strength.  Please God, I am utterly sinful without your mercy and grace – I am lost without You.  Change my selfish nature and give me your nature of love and self sacrifice.

01.19.2011