Victoriously forgiven!
It's snowing, really quite heavily :o) but that means that I can't make it in to church today :o(
A mixed bag of blessings. I'd prefer church over snow any day though... which means that church must be real good.
Do you sometimes feel as though sin is not defeated in your life?
Well, it’s not true; sin is defeated – the cross saw to that! But we are to die to self every day, although some days I forget this and I find myself falling so easily into sin. It feels as though salvation didn’t reign at all in my life!
I get so frustrated and angry with myself on days like this. I hate the way that sin hurts me [the real me, the born again, rescued, living-by-faith-not-by-sight me]. I hate the way it hurts my beloved saviour, the One I want to serve, upon whose face I want to cause a smile to appear.
We do not need to submit to sin though; we do not have to accept its presence in our lives. God is rich in mercy and forgives and we can run to Him. If God forgave as consistently as we do we’d be done for, but He doesn’t. Phew! He is our strong tower, our fortress; a fortress whose walls destroy the enemies attack!
When I was in secondary school we all went away for a week in the Lake District. The week was packed with various activities, not all of which I enjoyed (but all of which I would do again if given the chance!). On one day a group of us went sailing. I had never sailed before. Of course the comedy classic occurred, i.e. the sailing instructor said “mind the boom”, to which I replied “mind the what?!” before being hit in the head by the object in question. If it was on You’ve Been Framed! I would have laughed so hard… but it wasn’t. I have never forgotten what a boom is or how fast it moves and how quickly it needs to be avoided!
After our initial training we were paired up and sent off in little sailing dinghies. Before long we forgot everything we had been taught (see above) and as a result the wind kept flipping our boat over hurling us into the lake. Having found yourself in this situation you could either choose to bob about in the cold water (no doubt being sized up by numerous unseen submerged predators … or at least that is what concerned me) or get back in the boat. To do this you had to pull yourself up onto the boats fin [if that is what it is called], your weight would then cause the boat to right itself (at this moment you had to remember to move out of the way so that the boat didn’t land on you!). Then you could drag your soaked body out of the water and into the boat. We spent the whole day perfecting this manoeuvre!
The same is true in our lives. Sin would like to be a disabling force in our lives, but it is not (although it can be if we are stubborn and refuse God’s help). We get up and ask forgiveness and strength not to succumb to the same trap. Our victory and strength is in the fact that we are redeemed and forgiven. What is more this is not reliant on our ability to remain pure but because God is able [more than able] to keep us pure [when we rely fully on Him]!
I was reminded of this as I listened to a song by Rebecca St James in the car the other day:
Forgive Me
For all the times I’ve failed You, Lord
Forgive me
For all the ways I’ve fallen short
Lord, forgive me now
God, I’m so in need of grace
I fall upon my face
Forgive me
You see the tears fall down my face
Forgive me
Take my fear, Lord, take my shame
Lord, forgive me now
Purify me, make me new
Like only You can do
Forgive me now
Lord, we come to honour You
We are forgiven
We bring our love and thanks to You
We are forgiven now
God we praise You for Your grace
Before You we are raised
Forgiven
God we praise You for Your grace
Before You we are raised
Forgiven
Forgiven
We fail, we trip up, we sin, but we are also forgiven!
Not that we rejoice in being able to sin, we rejoice in the strength of our forgiveness. Every time we fail our prayer is the same ‘breathe holiness in me, Lord’. It is a prayer for fusion in our lives, in every bit of our lives… even the parts we want to hide from view.
“Generous in love – God, give grace! Huge in mercy – wipe out my bad record. Scrub away my guilt, soak out my sins in your laundry…
I've been out of step with you for a long time…
What you're after is truth from the inside out. Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life…
God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. Don't throw me out with the trash, or fail to breathe holiness in me. Bring me back from grey exile, put a fresh wind in my sails! …
God, my salvation, I'll sing anthems to your life-giving ways. Unbutton my lips, dear God; I'll let loose with your praise.” Psalm 51:1-2, 5-6,10-12,15-16
A mixed bag of blessings. I'd prefer church over snow any day though... which means that church must be real good.
Do you sometimes feel as though sin is not defeated in your life?
Well, it’s not true; sin is defeated – the cross saw to that! But we are to die to self every day, although some days I forget this and I find myself falling so easily into sin. It feels as though salvation didn’t reign at all in my life!
I get so frustrated and angry with myself on days like this. I hate the way that sin hurts me [the real me, the born again, rescued, living-by-faith-not-by-sight me]. I hate the way it hurts my beloved saviour, the One I want to serve, upon whose face I want to cause a smile to appear.
We do not need to submit to sin though; we do not have to accept its presence in our lives. God is rich in mercy and forgives and we can run to Him. If God forgave as consistently as we do we’d be done for, but He doesn’t. Phew! He is our strong tower, our fortress; a fortress whose walls destroy the enemies attack!
When I was in secondary school we all went away for a week in the Lake District. The week was packed with various activities, not all of which I enjoyed (but all of which I would do again if given the chance!). On one day a group of us went sailing. I had never sailed before. Of course the comedy classic occurred, i.e. the sailing instructor said “mind the boom”, to which I replied “mind the what?!” before being hit in the head by the object in question. If it was on You’ve Been Framed! I would have laughed so hard… but it wasn’t. I have never forgotten what a boom is or how fast it moves and how quickly it needs to be avoided!
After our initial training we were paired up and sent off in little sailing dinghies. Before long we forgot everything we had been taught (see above) and as a result the wind kept flipping our boat over hurling us into the lake. Having found yourself in this situation you could either choose to bob about in the cold water (no doubt being sized up by numerous unseen submerged predators … or at least that is what concerned me) or get back in the boat. To do this you had to pull yourself up onto the boats fin [if that is what it is called], your weight would then cause the boat to right itself (at this moment you had to remember to move out of the way so that the boat didn’t land on you!). Then you could drag your soaked body out of the water and into the boat. We spent the whole day perfecting this manoeuvre!
The same is true in our lives. Sin would like to be a disabling force in our lives, but it is not (although it can be if we are stubborn and refuse God’s help). We get up and ask forgiveness and strength not to succumb to the same trap. Our victory and strength is in the fact that we are redeemed and forgiven. What is more this is not reliant on our ability to remain pure but because God is able [more than able] to keep us pure [when we rely fully on Him]!
I was reminded of this as I listened to a song by Rebecca St James in the car the other day:
Forgive Me
For all the times I’ve failed You, Lord
Forgive me
For all the ways I’ve fallen short
Lord, forgive me now
God, I’m so in need of grace
I fall upon my face
Forgive me
You see the tears fall down my face
Forgive me
Take my fear, Lord, take my shame
Lord, forgive me now
Purify me, make me new
Like only You can do
Forgive me now
Lord, we come to honour You
We are forgiven
We bring our love and thanks to You
We are forgiven now
God we praise You for Your grace
Before You we are raised
Forgiven
God we praise You for Your grace
Before You we are raised
Forgiven
Forgiven
We fail, we trip up, we sin, but we are also forgiven!
Not that we rejoice in being able to sin, we rejoice in the strength of our forgiveness. Every time we fail our prayer is the same ‘breathe holiness in me, Lord’. It is a prayer for fusion in our lives, in every bit of our lives… even the parts we want to hide from view.
“Generous in love – God, give grace! Huge in mercy – wipe out my bad record. Scrub away my guilt, soak out my sins in your laundry…
I've been out of step with you for a long time…
What you're after is truth from the inside out. Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life…
God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. Don't throw me out with the trash, or fail to breathe holiness in me. Bring me back from grey exile, put a fresh wind in my sails! …
God, my salvation, I'll sing anthems to your life-giving ways. Unbutton my lips, dear God; I'll let loose with your praise.” Psalm 51:1-2, 5-6,10-12,15-16
posted by Andrew at 8:18 am
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