Gentle God

I am very excited! I was helping the youth pastor write a contract today to buy a home. (You can be praying that it works out.) We started talking about how when our eyes are on Jesus, he brings to light the issues in our lives he wants to work out. We don't have to go "devil-hunting". If we look for sins in our lives, we will find them everywhere. But when we just focus on God, he brings things to surface that if we were to realize on our own would seem impossible. If we see imperfections in through our own eyes, we are devastated, wondering how we will be able to overcome. We become a wreck, a mess. We wrestle. We waffle. We go back and forth, grappling with the sin that has taken hold.

But when it is God bringing it up in prayer time (for example) it is a gentle thing. God is so gentle with us. He would overpower us if we physically had a glimpse of him. So he is gentle. When sin is revealed through his eyes, it is shown first of all for the very ugly, oppressive and destructive thing that it is. Then, when we are thinking about how sick that was and how we want to be rid of it, we repent. When you get up from that prayer where it was God revealing something, you get up redeemed and free from the burden. You don't want to go back and hold the hand of the sin because you saw how destructive (and not fun) it was.

My hope is that many Christians can live life in this type of existence. I hope they don't obsess with external things or even things that the Spirit hasn't brought them to. I hope they are not held captive to wrestle with sin. I hope they are set free to walk in the fullness of God without being saddled with guilt or consuming sin.