A Promise for You

Perhaps it is a combination of just turning thirty and being pregnant, but I have had the quivery-lipped, stingy-eyed feeling for the past 24 hours.  If you are female, you probably know what I mean.  It's that lump that climbs up your throat at the smallest threat to your emotions and despite telling yourself to pull it together, you cannot swallow it down.  Colette kept looking at me like I have a boo-boo; large sympathetic eyes and she would quietly lay her head in my lap.  Re-enter lump and quiver-lip.

Maybe you don't ever have these kinds of weepy days and I am making the assumption that this is just a feminine quality.   But I am sure all of us have had those days where our emotions run amuck and failure seems to be in stride with our every step.  The dirty laundry, unmade beds, couple extra pounds, overdue blog entry, Colette and Mary's confused stares- all mocking me this morning.  Everything I was facing was nothing anyone couldn't trudge through with the right attitude, but I could not even conquer my own attitude this morning.

I have struggled with negativity my whole life.  I admit that I have difficulties around positive attitudes because it does not allow me to indulge my raw emotions about a situation.  Today I realized the actual battle that I was facing was entirely within myself.  Galatians 5:17 states, "For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.  They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want."  The reality is I am a child of God.  The reality is I am loved by Him.  The reality is He is creating a good work in me and I am pushing through like never before to submit to that, which is exactly why another force battles against me.

There are so many of us that are not willing to admit that there is someone out there working against our gains in Christ.  I have trouble even now pointing my finger and confidently saying that the devil works against us.  Perhaps it is because we just finished up with Halloween and we see how lightly some take his threat to the goodness in this world.  He has become a gimmick to many.  There was a time where I did not admit to his existence.    

The frustration that we experience as Christians is that we continue to sin in a sinful world and provide the devil with fodder to parade out in front of us.  He is constantly building a case against us that we are not worthy of the love God has for us.  On days like this I am all too tempted to hear him out.  But there are such words of hope to follow in that passage of Galatians.  Verse 18- "But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law."  Do you know what this means?  It means that despite my faults and my many failures that the devil does not want me to forget, God does not measure me up to the law.  Instead He looks to His Son who died for me and sees the blood that covered those sins and calls me to cling to that!  Christ died while we were still sinners!  God knows my failures.  What is important to Him is how I overcome them.

I told you I could not conquer my attitude this morning.  I did not conquer it, but God did.  He was waiting the whole time for me to come to Him and I didn't do it until I started typing this blog.  Remember how I told you I like to indulge my emotions?  So often I know that God will not indulge the way I am feeling and so I do not go to Him.  What is evident to me now is that I was not indulging my emotions, but the devil.  He was trying to immobilize me, sink me further into feeling like a failure as a wife and mother and Christian so that he could convince me to stop trying.  But the whole while God was holding out promises to me that I was not accepting.  As a child of God we are entitled to the fruits of His Spirit.  He has promised to us the ability to be filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  I am the one who denies myself these treasures because I have allowed the argument that I do not have a right to them.

Galatians 5:1 says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."  I let myself be burdened by the yoke of slavery by using the law as a measure of how God viewed me.  I became a slave to the law trying to save myself, but Christ already saved me.  I must stand firm in the love that He has for me, so that I do not let the devil gain a foothold in my emotions again.  Not only does Christ love me in spite of my failures, but He has given me the ability to live by His Spirit so that I can be better than I was today.  That promise is for you too!  Live by the fruit of his Spirit and do not be burdened by the yolk of sin.  Christ already took care of that for you.