Living

It's been such a long while since I've done anything. I always have an excuse; 'I'm revising' 'It's exam period' 'I'm on holiday' 'I'm working on my UCAS' 'I'm waiting for results' 'I just got my results' 'PERSONAL STATEMENT!'


It's silly really. 
I just need to live.
It's one of my greatest fears, being lost in the mundane. That each day drags into the same, until you lose that sense of awe at how vast the sky you live under is, at how fresh the morning feels, at simple things like bare feet on over-hot tarmac and the messiness of finger-painting. I get so lost in what must be done that I forget to enjoy.


I went on holiday, wandered the beach at night, and read my bible, and this verse got stamped all over my heart..
"For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God." - Galatians 2:19


And I realised, that I'd gotten so caught up in what must be done that I'd forgotten to just live for God. My actions were boxes that needed to be ticked 
- Read bible daily
- Pray for others
- Stop being so judgemental
- Work on the pride thing


Don't get me wrong, all these things needed to, and still need to be done, but I'd forgotten why I was doing them, how I could do them, how if I just took Jesus literally when he said "Love God, Love Others", everything else falls into place. I realised that every inch of me had been screaming out 'just let me live for God' but I hadn't been letting myself, I'd been hampering my freedom in Christ; because the freedom we're given is grace, the room to make mistakes, say sorry and ask for the Spirit's help to change. Nobody ever changed themselves through following the rules, only through experience, growth, acknowledging our faults and allowing ourselves to be shaped by God can we become even a little bit more like Jesus. There is a great joy that comes from knowing Christ, having him live in us and guide us, and I don't want to miss that because I'm too busy ticking off my 'how to live like a Christian' checklist.

So even though this blog post isn't perfect, neither am I. I could polish it and polish to make it look like how I want to be presented to the outside world. Or I can just stick it up here. It has the capacity to be wrong, but so do I. Just got to live life anyway.

Redefining Righteousness

Proverbs 24:16 says, “The righteous man falls down seven times, but seven times, he rises again.”
That’s not what comes to our minds when most of us think of a righteous person. We think they’re someone who never or rarely falls. But that’s because our idea of righteousness is rooted in self-righteousness. The real righteous person is the one who has been made righteous by Jesus and then can let Jesus pick him back up when up when he falls.   

This extract is taken from the blog of Steven Furtick, and was, to me, like a giant slap in the face. Although that image of punishment completely negates what this is saying. Perhaps it would be better to say it was a great dousing of grace, because my notion of righteousness is all wrong.
Being righteous, it's all about who can get to the point where they make the least mistakes, right? I can't believe I was believing that. A subconscious trick was telling me these lies.

The truth: a righteous person is a person whose righteousness comes from Christ.
Sounds basic, but it redefines our images of what it means to be righteous and holy. The world says this is a holy person:

Look how clean and shiny he is. But God isn't concerned with what the world labels as holy. I could never drink, attend church every sunday, tithe my money, spend my time volunteering, and the world might think I was 'righteous'. But God looks at the heart. And his definition of righteous is the one who trusts in God for their righteousness. Who has the humility to ask time and time again for his grace to be able to get back on their feet. It's so simple, and so beautiful. It's so much easier than trying to please the world, and live up to their expectation of 'righteousness'.

And what is even more astounding, is that when we lift our eyes off ourselves and concern for our own holiness, and fix them upon Jesus, the perfect example of righteousness, when we kneel before him, dwell in his love and search for him in his Word, he does it all for us anyway. The light of God shapes us inside first, then outside next, the way it's supposed to be.

It's time to stop the striving, and to stop believing the lies. 

You have not loved (and cannot love) your neighbor enough to please God, therefore, in order to stand righteous before God, you must trust in and glorify the Righteous One who loves his neighbor perfectly.

Various things stolen from:  http://www.stevenfurtick.com/ and http://dangitbill.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/who-may-stand-before-god/