"Gnothi Seauton" -2

"Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth." (Psalms 46:10) I have actually had something wrong, and I it has just dawned on me: God did not call me because He knew that I would walk in holiness, He called me because He loves me, even though I am not perfect! Think about this for a moment, because we can sure spend a lot of time hating ourselves over something really is a fundamental part of who we are; we are sinners that are saved by God's grace, and even though the sin has been dealt with for all eternity, we are still living in the here-and-now, and therefore, we still are dealing with sin. We actually should be spending more time praising God, not just because He deserves to be praised, but because of the mighty weight He has taken off of us; that is if we are willing to accept the fact that He has removed the weight from us; which is really hard to do, because we cannot understand the logic of unconditional love; it's just so far out of the bounds of the way that we love, even in the way that we love God. Think about our hearts, which the Bible says, "they are deceitfully wicked", which is not because God is deceived, but it is we that are deceived by our own wickedness; our hearts are so wicked, that we are deceived by the plots and the desires that are within them. We are not able to love as God would have us to love, and the harder we try, the easier it is to be disappointed by our failures. It is God's love that must be poured out into our hearts; not just once and done, but it is a constant need that we have for His love to be poured into us; it is a need that is never satisfied, nor is it ever enough. My car constantly needs me to put gas into it's tank; the further I go, the more gas that I will need; so too, I need God's love poured into my heart, and the more that I love, the more of His love that I need. I can't continue loving as He would have me to love, without His love being poured out into my heart; just like my car cannot continue to go without me putting in more gas to get down the road. I guess I could cut a hole in the floor, and I could Flintstone down the highway, but that would be impossible; so too, is it impossible for me to love without God's love being poured into my life. That said, we can view righteousness in the same light, in that it is God's righteousness that makes me holy, never my own; trying to make my righteousness count for my holiness is like putting sugar into my car's gas tank; my car is going to break down. So too, my righteousness is going to disappoint me, and I am going to feel defeated and ashamed, and the testimony that I should have of the glory of God is going to be broken down on the side of the road... "Much more than, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son; much more, being reconciled we shall be saved by His life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement." (Romans 5:9-11)