When people come to the Lord later in life they often have a more
dramatic God experience than the rest of us. For the last few years my daughter
has been under a great deal of strain because of leasing a car rather than
buying a car on payments. This month she reached the end of the lease and was
able to turn in the keys. With a new day dawning she laughed, “What a relief. This is probably the closest
thing I’ve ever felt to what a new believer experiences when he accepts Christ.
The burden is lifted, your sins are forgiven and you can walk away from your
old life free and clear.”
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Thank you. My God experience was not very dramatic because it kind of built into my youth. The lack of its drama and the resulting lack of my having a “profound” testimony has bothered me ever since. On the same nickel I must say that even though I profoundly felt the lifting of the death sentence for my sins, I felt a new weight come upon me regarding the effects of my continuing mistakes and failures, “...you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (I Cor 6:20)
-----What glorifies God? In the simplest sense just saying, “Glory be to God!” does. And so you hear that a lot. And since it is said by the mouth it is done in the body. But there’s got to be more to it than that. Every confronting situation is a chance to glorify God. We face these with decisions to make between alternative solutions, usually more than two, and usually one or more dastardly alternatives and one or more godly alternatives. Sometimes situations are as simple as how much salt for my French fries. Sometimes they’re more significant, like whether or not to quell my stress with a cigarette. Occasionally they’re as critical as whether to work hard and pay my own medical bills or pressure the government into coercing their payment from my neighbors. And they can be as dastardly as using my own gun to force my neighbor to pay them. But however light or heavy are the situations and godly or dastardly the alternatives, eyes are always watching the decisions you make - yours and God’s for sure, and maybe those of angels. And often the eyes of other people are upon your decision’s effects. Your selected alternative will or won’t glorify God according to whether it is a godly one or an easier, less principled one.
-----And what one of us has never said, “I could have made a better decision.” Your blog for May 25 comes to my mind. Jesus specifically prayed that we not be taken out of the world at our conversion, but that we remain in it until the time of our body’s death. Since we are left in the flesh in an ungodly world until then, glorifying God in the body becomes a struggle itself. Matter not how much of it comes by the nature of the likeness of Him into which we have changed, there always remains another degree of glory to reach by struggle until more likeness of Him makes more glorifying Him come more naturally as well. Since we will be imperfect until death, the payment of struggle against the flesh does not stop unless another bad decision stops the desire to change into His likeness.
-----So unless your daughter desires the burden of walking everywhere, she still faces the burden of buying another car. But that burden is altogether different. It brings the joy of ownership and the hope of no more payments, just like the burden of changing into His likeness brings the joy of participating in God with the sure hope of its coming entirely by nature once we reach that glorious City.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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