Sitting on my Toilet

I remember I used to always ask why making decisions as a Christian was so much harder and more complicated than before becoming a Christian.  For most of my life up to the mid-twenties, I grew up with no religious affiliations or believed in no one except for myself.  I had control over my life and I was going to do whatever it took to realize the goals that I’ve set for myself.  To me, I was pretty good at it and the decisions I made got me to many rewards and accomplishments.  After I became a believer, all of the sudden decision making involved this another person;  ‘what does God wants me to do?’.  Never really got a solid answer back.  I thought to myself ‘man, this is so hard! it was so much easier back then’.

Few years later, I came to realize something.  It was a profound realization at the time and an ‘ah ha’ moment.  While I thought all my decisions had got me where I was, I realized that all along God was with me.  Before I even recognized Him, He was guiding me, loving me and giving me strengths.  Looking back, I’ve made my share of mistakes and came pretty close to messing up my own life few times, but it didn’t happen.  While I thought ‘I’ was in control, God was secretly nudging and guiding me around.

Few more years passed by and as I was rethinking over my life experience, another thought came to me.  God loves all of us before we even knew Him.  It’s not that once we become a believer, He began love us.  But all along, He loved us.  His rescue plan to save human kind was long in the works before we even existed.

What’s so profound about that?

It means that we are accepted, we are loved, we are worthy and everything was there for us to claim, simply if we turned towards Him.  Faith. Repent.

See, as Christians now, we are not doing all of the things the bible says to do to earn or maintain God’s love for us.  We do all of those things in response to His love that He freely gave.  But how many of us feel like God is moving afar when we stumble and fall, or when we are not doing ‘churchy’ stuff, we must not be favored by God? It’s almost as though God’s favor was the result of our own good performance.  When life gets tough, we think God is judging us and punishing us, and there must be sin in our lives.  Does that mean when life is going great, it’s us that doing something right?  Satan’s ultimate bet with God is that when God withdrawls His hands over our lives, His people will turn away from Him.  Remember Job and his friends?

If God loved us even when we didn’t know Him, shouldn’t we be all pumped up and live a life all out for Him now that we are? While we should remember that we were sinners saved by grace, but we are also now the heir of God.  Shouldn’t we begin to live a worthy life because God says we can? We stumble but we pick ourselves up and continue the race. Too often I hear churches and believer say ‘oh we are just sinners’ or often prayers all start from ‘oh God, I messed up. Please forgive me…’, I am not inferring not to confess, I am saying that don’t dwell in that place.

The way we live our lives and what enabled us to live that way, is the ultimate testament for the world to see and to be the cause for change in their lives.  It is when we live our lives confidently and boldly for God, not because we earned it, but because He said we are, that our radiance draws the rest of the world.  We have to realize that we are the message!

Begin living a life that brings honor to God from fully accepting who we are.  Isn’t it more honoring when we no longer see ourselves only as a sinner saved by grace, but now as heirs of God? Isn’t it a greater form of humility to believe Him when He says we are precious in His sight when we don’t feel very precious?

It’s easy to be self negative and self punishing to look at all of our weaknesses and shortcomings,while it’s good to take inventory but if we are constantly in this state, and never move on from Step 1 of being a Christian, how will we ever look outside of ourselves? It wasn’t that we were perfect when God first loved us, so why now would we think God will stop loving us? Let’s move on from Step 1, and embrace the ourselves as the way God sees us.

If you see yourself the way God sees you today, how will your thoughts differ? how will your actions differ? will you still desire the same things you desire now?

Will you take on this calling of living a worthy life for the one who gave it all?