DEBT.

Debt.  This is a word I understand.  I'm am all to familiar with the concept of owing someone or some company money.  I shouldn't be or rather I wish I wasn't; but here it is 2009 and two car payments, 3 credit cards, and one child birth later... ta daaa, I have become an expert on finance charges and revolving interest rates and credit scores and the list goes on and on.  It's a fairly simple principle.  You don't have what you want.  You haven't prepared to get it.  So you let someone else give you what you want with the promise of giving it back with the bonus of interest.  

Grace.  This is a word I only pretend to understand.  Because unlike debt it doesn't come with the same responsibility.  There are no chains that bind us to grace.  No weekend phone calls from "grace collectors" if you fail to make an extension of grace to others.  No mandated higher  payments because you forsake grace one month and no need to play the grace shell game (I'm putting all my grace here because I don't have to pay it back for a year, unless someone with a higher level of grace comes along then I'll transfer my relationship there).  But like debt, I didn't have what I wanted (life).  I wasn't prepared to get it (perfection).  So someone else (Jesus) had to give me what I needed (salvation).  There was no interest.  No penalties.  And I didn't have to clean up my debt record to qualify.

Debt's impact on our life is measured by what we do to meet our RESPONSIBILITY.  You work two jobs, or three, or four to keep the cars and houses and flat screen t.v.. Debt fences in our lives so that we live up to our commitment.  

Grace's impact on our life is measured by what we do meet RESPOND-ABILITY.  And yes I know those all caps words are supposed to mean the same thing but they don't.  Grace motivates us to do crazy things like work extra hours not so that we can keep our possessions but so that we can have more to give away.  It becomes about how do I respond to such an amazing gift rather than what must I do to pay back what you have given.

Today I've been thinking a lot about my attitude toward Christ and about how often I approach the throne with a debtor's mindset.  I know that I go for days living like I need to pay back my grace that he gave me on the cross rather than living to make much of Jesus as I respond to that grace being revealed to me everyday.

I am not in DEBT to the cross of Christ.  To say that cheapens the grace of the cross.  I, instead, gleefully, and whole heartedly bind myself to the cross out of gratitude for his tremendous GRACE.

Control

Once, in a town very very far from here, lived a young man.  This particular young man was an idiot.  It took Jesus a very long time to convince him of this truth and during that time he did many stupid things.  Not very much seems to have changed except that now he realizes he's an idiot.  He still tries to run his own world, order his own steps, and control his own destiny.  What a silly little man he is.  

Im talking about me incase you're not smelling what I'm stepping in.  

I was listening to Matt Chandler again this morning and one phrase stuck out of his message and jabbed me right in the ribs.  "I didn't take all the power from you, you never had any to begin with.  That's an illusion"  Kinda makes me a little angry that the whole time I was trying to make everything work out, balancing this over here and throwing that up in the air over there and trying to get some magical perspective that would allow me to see all that needed to happen so that in every situation where my life was falling apart I could magically bring it all together and work it out, I couldn't have been successful anyway.  

(all you grammar nerds out there start sending me email about the run on sentence)

It actually makes me a lot angry and it is directed squarely at the being most responsible for the mess...ME.  What takes me so long to just be secure in God instead of my abilities (faulty as they are) and my resources (limited as they are) and my understanding (finite as it is)?  It is beyond me how every night I go to bed giving it all to the Lord and wake up the next morning taking it all back.  GEEEESH...(word from the 80's)  

I really am at a point of personal frustration at how much control I imagine that I have and how little direction I yield to.  Thanks for reading my rant!  What a way to kick of a blog.