"Burning Down the House" -2

"They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground." (Psalms 74:7) Is it not comforting to know that God is bigger than our mistakes? Come on, you have got to see the connection, because there is nothing we can do that God cannot undo, and there is no power on this earth that God can not defeat. So, sure enough, we can totally neglect our part of any covenant with God, and we almost always do, but that does not mean God's covenant with us is made any less binding. Do you know why that might be? I just got chills! I could not help but think of Jesus lifting His cup up to His disciples, saying, "This is the cup of My covenant with you; drink." It's not that we are totally left out of the contract, because the contract is for us; but we have no part in the guarantee of what causes the contract to be binding and whole. If anything, any part that we might have in the producing of the contract was due in part because of our need for the contract to be produced. It's like building a home for the homeless; you don't expect the homeless to take part in the production and establishment of the dwelling, you are only expecting them to enter in and find shelter. So, if you really wanted to get technical about who is appealing to whom, then you need to examine who it is that has the most power in the game; meaning, who is it that is the most persuasive! Surely you don't think that you can persuade God of anything? No, it is God who is the one doing the persuading; it is God who is trying to get us to listen to Him, not the other way around. When God says, in Isaiah 1:18, "Come now, and let us reason together," it is not as though God has anything He is going to do to change, His purpose to get us to reason is for us to accept the contract that He has already established, not that we can add to or take away anything of the contract, because it is already finished; it was finished on the cross, with the words of Jesus Christ, and signed with His blood. Wow, we didn't even get to supply the ink for signing the contract, God took care of that also! I was just thinking of something else that relates to what God is speaking into my heart; when Jesus said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." (John 2:19) There is really only one thing that gets in the way of our ability to enter into God's covenant, and it is our own temple, which just so happens to be this tent that we dwell within; it must be destroyed in order to be lifted up... "So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am too human, a slave to sin. I really don't understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate. But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it. And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don't want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it. I have discovered this principle of life -that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God's law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God's law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin." (Romans 7:14-25) NLT