01/26/11 And there is grace. choices.

How loving and kind is our God that He sets before us the beauty of choice.

I’ve often held that in contempt in the past.

Wanting to ‘do it right’ in order to be ‘good enough’ I’d thought that if He would just set before me one and only one path, the one to Himself, it would make it easier.

So much for my wisdom.

Laughing at my desire to be lazy and coast into heaven, having made all the right choices.....  never considering that a life thus lived would be just dumb.

What glory is it to Him who gave us so much, to give so little in our walk?  What does it say about Him if we have nothing to tempt us or even to glorify Him in our lives once we belong to Him?

How can we demonstrate to the world who He is if we are no longer burdened with the challenges that life brings?

I mean, there is no reason to stay behind otherwise, right?

So here I am just tooling along my daily life of choices big and small.

And I think about my desires.  And I think about who He made me to be.  And I consider what He has put in my heart. 

My flesh has it’s own agenda.  My heart another.  And my spirit being renewed to conform to His image has a total different desire.

How shall I go?

What path do I take?

I know that in His love for me He would not be angry if I chose only to seek after the things my flesh or my heart desired.  And He gives good things for satisfaction of those desires.  It does not necessarily mean that the flesh rules completely drawing me away into a quagmire of sin.  Nor does my heart’s desire being sought mean that I am walking away from Him.  For He gave me the desires, He knew before the foundations of the earth were created what He would put in me.  And it is His good pleasure to provide for me with everything I could ever want.  And this too would be acceptable, a life lived for Him demonstrating His love and His compassion.  But is that the race that He has set before me. 

I can choose the good, the acceptable, or the perfect will of God. 

I can seek Him at what ever level I want.

And it will be blessed.

But

What of His desires for me?

What part did He play? 

How is a choice for good or acceptable going to measure up when in the end it is not about me anyway?

Yet such grace and love He has for me that He offers me the choice, without condemnation, without penalty, to decide how much of me I will give back to Him.

Will I give Him my fleshly desires?

Will I give Him even my heart’s desires?

Or will I give Him all of it, flesh, heart, and spirit, to use as He will for His glory?

Deep in the heart of every man is the desire for nobility I believe.  (man = mankind)

Ingrained in us all is the need to seek a greater good outside of ourselves.  To reach for the right thing no matter the cost.

The people that live that out are the fodder of legends.  We all love those stories.  They speak to that desire in all of us.

Seldom however, do we, the everyday person meet that goal.  Few are they that actuate it.

And often I believe as we live out what becomes our mundane lives, we long for that purpose which we were created to fulfill.

Even when life is not a disappointment per say, it is somehow less.

The one thing that God implanted in our DNA that is bigger than ourselves, of course it is Him.

But for each of us, He, plays out differently.  It’s according to how we are made.

It is according to the gifts, the life experiences, the desires that He has put in us.

It is our passion.  Our place, or function, or the people that draw us, pulling us toward that nobility; challenging us to be the best ‘me’ that we can be.

And so we have choices.  Choices between bad and good, but also choices between good, better, and best.

And on this side of those choices it seems that the cost correlates directly to the choice, easy, fair, difficult, and near impossible.

But I think, on the other side of the choice we find that what seemed near impossible yielded just what we suspected, the highest degree of pleasure.

The easy choice brings immediate but shallow pleasure, and so on.

I like that – now as I examine it – He has given us options, choices.  Not all bad, or good. 

We get to decide just how much we will invest in each part of our lives.

I am a black and white, all or nothing kind of person.

It truly bothers me to be half hearted.

I am irritated when I must stop before things are done, and done rightly.

I’d actually rather not start at all than leave anything incomplete.

That’s part of who I am.  It goes along with that desire for nobility in me.

So what is my desire?

What is my passion?

What of God is in me that presses me into His service of excellence?

What facet of Him was built into my DNA that will cause me endless restlessness until I have found it and sought it with everything I am?

And conversely once found and lived out will bring pleasure comparable to heaven regardless of the cost.

It would be easy to reach for the good, even the acceptable answers.  It would even be satisfying to a degree, for a time.

But I know me well.

I would not be satisfied or content to settle for less than all He has for me to be.

I must run the race that He has set before me.  

My race. 

His plan for me. 

His goal for my best life. 

To fulfill all that I was made to be.

And even if that means letting go of the good and the acceptable, being uncomfortable, walking away from security, I must seek the perfect.

I’m not looking for a name in a legend. 

I’m looking for a huge smile from my Father and a ‘well done’ at the finish line.

And the funny thing is that I know a stumble and a fall and a mess up along the way will not taint that smile or lessen the joy of those words.

Is it not my Father’s good pleasure to give grace and mercy to His children?

I am in Christ Jesus, and there is nothing that will be withheld for those who walk uprightly before Him.

I think the walking uprightly as seeking to live and be who He created each of us to be, more than trying to mold oneself into an image of a litany of rules and ‘should be’s’

Because it comes from the spark that is ignited in our DNA when the Holy Spirit joins with us to give us power to do just that.

It does not work to try it from the outside in.

What is your passion?

What has He built in you of Himself that hungers to be loosened and lived out?

I think, like Joshua I will say, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

That is the choice I would make.

Now Holy Spirit, in light of His grace, I ask Your help, to give me the strength to live it out.