It occurred to me that my biggest sin is this...I'm still using my own standard of what is good and bad behavior. And where I know my behavior is wrong in God's eyes, I just do it anyway and ask God to forgive me and think we are good. When I do this I look at grace as an enabler for bad behavior.
This is not right. What I need to do is fully embrace God's standard of right and wrong, and fully submit myself to that standard. Maybe I have been fleeing that standard because there are so many areas of my life that are out of sync with that standard. Note, in this fallen body...that has the old sin nature and the new born again nature fight, I will never be perfect, as at times I will fall short. That is what the grace of Jesus is there for then...it covers me when I tried and failed. But the difference is here is that I'm honestly striving for God's Holy standard, not just pretending to and then falling back and misusing God's grace to go my own way and pretend that I'm not.
I don't really know what happened to me. When I first got saved I was all about God's standard and knew that grace was there to cover all my sins but it was my duty as a child of God to push my standard of right and wrong off to the side and embrace the Lord's even though sometimes I would fail it. Over the years I've flipped back to my pre-saved version of what is right and wrong. Oh I surround it with Christianese...and ask God to forgive me when I fail, but the repentance...the changing of my mind...the turning towards God has really suffered.
Don't get me wrong...I'm still a hyper-gracer and believe once saved always saved. But I also believe that in order to be used fully by God, you must be striving to do what Paul in Romans 12:1-2 beseeches believers do every day. I have not, and my relationship with God has gone from friend to someone at the back of the bus. And it isn't God pushing me away...it is me ignoring Him calling me time and time again back into Holiness and being close to Him...but I foolishly choose the back of the bus again and again.
This really hit home for me recently, as I did repent for a good while of most of the stuff I was doing and God really started to bless me. But then on a critical weekend I went into willful sin and just wasted all those blessings. This was a micro experience, but I'm looking back at the macro of my life and seeing so many blessings and ways God could have used me but I've been largely fruitless. Not totally, but not even close to being the man that God wanted me to be. And as I get older, I see how selfish I've been and how much I've robbed God, others, and myself of knowing the me as I should be instead of how I am. Instead of being a man that blesses many people and is a reflection of God's glory, I'm more of the walking wounded...with God trying to heal me and me turning away.
The sad part is now I am old. I will NEVER be the person I could have been if I had let the Holy Spirit mold me as He desired to do. There just isn't enough time and so many opportunities will not return. There is no going back.
But I can still be fruitful in my remaining years if I yield. In the video game culture we live in if my life were a game this would be where I would say, "Better just to start over" and delete my save game and go back and start from the beginning or near beginning. But this is life, there is no do-over. You get one shot to decide who you are.
One of the element's of Holiness is to deny yourself and pick up your cross daily. The denying of self part is to not put yourself at the center of your life but put Jesus and other's first. So that is a blessing as if I take myself mostly out of the picture...where I'm no longer worried if I turn out one way or another, and just rely on what God has for me on the day that I am in, it makes looking back and mourning over many wasted years sting less, as this life isn't about me but is about Jesus. And although my life is already most likely half to two thirds over, there is still time enough, if I am willing and will submit, to bring God some fruit that pleases Him.
I know Jesus loves me...and his Love is a perfect love, and it isn't like human love which is ultimately behavior based. God loves me beyond what I do. But it would still be sure nice that I live my life in such a way that the Holy Spirit that lives in me smiles instead of is grieved.
So today, as the Holy Spirit enables, I will begin really trying to live Romans 12:1-2. I know I can't do it, I need to ask God to do it in me. And I need to keep asking God to do it in me. And I must believe that He will do it in me.
Romans 12:1-2 (KJV)
12 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
