Graceful Rewrite part 5
Your story has been rewritten. All those mistakes you made--all those things other people (and you yourself) hold against--no longer matter. Because of grace. Because God has chosen to forget about them. HE is not holding ANYTHING against you. He sees you as perfect. "Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee" (Song of Solomon 4:7). But the question then becomes: If there's no spot in me, why do I keep acting like I have spots? Why do I keep doing the same things? Making the same mistakes? Romans 7:15 in the NLT says it like this, "I don't really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate." But that's a man who is under the Law. A man who has fallen from grace. And make no mistake, putting yourself under the Law is the ONLY way to fall from grace. Tryinig to be someone you're not is the only way to get out of the rest of God. Trying to "fix" your own story when God already took care of it. Trying to enter into the sheepfold any other way but the door, and robbing yourself of the gift you've been given. The key is not trying to do what you want to do. The key is seeing the finished work of the cross. Because if you know (and believe) that the work is finished, you can stop trying to finish it. You can rest. When you know who you really are you can stop trying to be anybody else. When you see how grace rewrote your story you can just enjoy the ride. You can let it go, and let it flow. You can stop struggling. What's inside comes out, naturally. Or rather--what you believe is inside comes out. When you know (and believe) that you are filled to overflowing with the love and God, and when you know and believe that it has nothing to do with what you do, but everything to do with who you are, that's when it comes out. When you fill yourself with what you've been filled with. When you let God love you and love others with that same love. But if you're too busy condemning yourself, or letting others condemn you and believing that lie, you won't have anything to give except bitterness, and hurt, and condemnation. Because you can't give what you don't have. And you can only give what you do have. If your story is one "bad" experience after another... that's what manifests in your life. That's your reality. But it doesn't have to be. When God shows us what's inside--when He reveals Himself to us, and through us, and in us, and as us--then we can let "our" past be history and we can let HIS story be OUR history. Remember we started this Rant series with Abraham? And how even though he most definitely staggered at the promise of God, when his story was written in the New Testament he was remembered as NOT staggering? He was remembered as the father of faith. Because Jesus has the final word on you, and Jesus IS the final word on you. He is the Word of God. And that Word is love. God in the flesh. Love in a body. That's our story. And whatever surface stuff we sometimes get buried under doesn't really matter. We learn from it, and we move on. Upward and God-ward. "...but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14).