I just had breakfast with a good friend. For the past couple of months, we have been reading some things that have been causing us to work back through our understanding of grace. Not our intellectual understanding, but our heart understanding. Walking this out is simple, and yet profoundly difficult. It goes against our very nature, which is to want to depend on ourselves for our own righteousness before God. We started to pray together, and as I was praying, I felt like the Holy Spirit revealed my heart to me. I stopped suddenly, looked at him in wild-eyed intensity, and said, "I cant need it!" I cant "need" to be free and pure in my walk before the Lord. I cant "need" that freedom in order to feel like I am accepted by Him. To the extent that I "need" it, I am still walking in my own righteousness; I am still trying to earn His love. I need to want it, I want to want it, but I need to be free from the "need" for it. What I "need" is fully supplied in the grace and mercy of God. When I am fully satisfied in what He has provided, then I am free to walk in the love that flows from gratitude in the knowledge of His goodness and beauty. Then I can experience what Paul describes as "the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith." Faith working through love, righteous living as an expression of thankful worship. An acceptable offering.
Make sense?
Lord, give me clear and simple understanding of your ways.....
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