Romans 5:6-8 ESVj
From the Jar
When I first had the idea of writing from scripture verses that I selected from a jar I wasn’t sure how that would work.
I loved the idea of scripture verses being typed onto colorful pieces of paper and put into a jar. I thought it was a really cool idea.
But I wasn’t sure that it would work for me.
It seemed like it was a precarious idea.
Like…what if nothing came to me when I read the verse I chose?
What would I do then?
Hummm…I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Then I thought of my days in college (long long ago) when I took Freshman English and I had to write an extemporaneous paper from a line the professor wrote on the blackboard.
I couldn’t understand what he wrote. I didn’t have a dictionary to look up the words that I didn’t understand.
I thought…okay I’m goin’ down.
Then, it hit me…’I got nuttin.’
That was the title of the paper. I wrote three pages about what I didn’t know about what the professor told us to write about.
Toward the end of the paper, I was brave and brazen. I was desperate and I was funny.
When I turned in my paper as I exited the room I thought, ‘well I was honest…I got nuttin’.
What I got, folks was an A .
I didn’t find anyone else in the class who got A...neither did my roommate who was also in the class.
Even though my roommate was really smart, she got a C-. She asked me if she could read my paper. After she read it she said, “it’s really about nothing.”
I said, “I know. That’s all I had so that’s what I wrote about.”
So, that’s why I decided to take the challenge of writing from the jar.
That brings me to today’s scripture. In Romans 5:6-8 Paul wrote, “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
We were (are) weak.
Sometimes we got nuttin’.
When we feel that way we need to give ourselves the right to feel that way. We also need to let God be God.
That’s what God wants for His children. At the right time God sent His son to die for us. Jesus died so that we might live.
2 Corinthians 5:11-15 tells us, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”
According to the Apostle Paul when we get real and others know we are hurting and have turned to God, we persuade them to turn to God. AND when we get real about turning to God it is for God. That’s because God WANTS us to turn to Him. God loves us that much!
That’s why God sent His Son to die for us. God wanted (wants) to help us turn to Him.
So now we no longer live for ourselves. We are not lost in a vacuum. When we turn to God/Jesus we live for and with God.
Essentially then when we are weak and we turn to God, that’s when we are really strong. We are not strong in ourselves…
God is our strength.
Even though I didn’t know it at the time, when I wrote my crazy paper saying ‘I got nuttin’’ that’s when I was being my most authentic self.
I fully admitted I didn’t understand anything about what the professor wrote on the blackboard.
Likewise when we recognize we are weak and we admit that to God by turning to God, that’s when we become our most authentic self. Ultimately, that’s what God wants.
God wants us…the real us.
Today’s Spiritual Practice is: Stop trying to be strong.
Let go of your perceived strength and be your most authentic self before God.
In God, Deborah
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