Heart

Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend about the difference between being a sinner and being a hypocrite; one of her children can't see the difference.
I also had another conversation with one of the sweetest, kindest girls I know. She explained to me that faith and love just come out of her heart but that she can't memorize a verse to save her life.
Both girls have felt extraordinarily flabbergasted or stupid when "called out" by people who don't share their need for God or by people who feel they know God better than them.

Another amazing friend of mine recently sat on my couch and told me she is mad at God. She has very good reason to be mad. Both she and her husband lost their dads before they could see the cute children she and her husband produced. I explained to her that I have nothing but hope for her, that because she can say she is mad at God, it probably won't always be that way. I love who she is entirely.

The greatest gift these friends have given me this season is their honesty. It is refreshing, it is wonderful, it is what I need. I don't need perfection. I don't need friends who always have it together. I don't need friends who never doubt, who never share anger, frustration, etc. I don't need slick "Bible bangers" who can put me to shame with their head knowledge. I need heart!

I need people who know their need for God whether they are temporarily (if they know their need it's always temporary) stuck or they are moving full speed ahead.

If you take away a person's need for God, you rob them of experiencing God...and you cheapen what Christ did on the cross. We had better get over ourselves.

Here's how it reads in Peterson's Message:

We know very well that we are not set right with God by rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do we know? We tried it—and we had the best system of rules the world has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to be good.

Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? (No great surprise, right?) And are you ready to make the accusation that since people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right with God, aren't perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous. If I was "trying to be good," I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I would be acting as a charlatan.

What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a "law man" so that I could be God's man. Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.

Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.
Can I get an "Amen"?