What I'm Learning

I'm reading Having a Mary Spirit by Joanna Weaver. She addresses the topic of our sinful nature. I realized that I frequently let guilt get in the way of spending time with God. Every time I go to God, I have so many sins and shortcomings and failures to confess. While I had been trying to accept His forgiveness and move on in prayer and growth after each confession, I unconsciously still felt guilty and far away from Him. I felt that even though I kept begging God to help me change and become more like Him, it wasn't happening, and that would only make me try harder in myself and (of course) fail again.

Weaver writes,

"Satan wants me - and he wants you! - to be so constantly preoccupied with what
we're not that we never get around to realizing all that God is. Our enemy
wants to keep us so consumed with our inadequacies that we never get around to
appropriating the love and transforming power God has made available to us
through His Son."

Ooh - that's me! I need to focus on God rather than on me. (A recurring theme in my growth, I'm afraid!) As sinful and low as I am, His bigness is so much more than that.

A few pages later, she writes,

"Somehow in the past I had confused repentance with penance... You see, I had
picked up the false belief that I had to feel really bad for a certain amount of
time before I could be forgiven; that I had to add something to the Cross and
the shed blood of Christ."

I realized that I had been doing that too. I didn't (and probably still don't, although I'm working on it) have the right understanding of God's grace and forgiveness. He already knows what I'm like; He knows everything about me. He loves me anyway. While He wants me to confess to Him and ask for forgiveness, He wants His relationship with me to go further than that. If He's not hung up on that part of our relationship, maybe I don't have to be either.

It's funny how we grow in our walk with God. Years ago, I read Philip Yancey's What's So Amazing About Grace and found it transformative. At that time, I was convicted about needing to show others more grace. I didn't really make the conviction that I had any problems accepting grace myself!

I'm so thankful that we have a God who is kind and compassionate and patient with us. I really need it!