Me: Lord, if you just get me out of this situation with no consequences, I promise that I will never do this again. I will get in my word every day and work aggressively to stay on the straight and narrow.
Also me: Does exactly what I told the Lord I was going to never do again.
I want to take a different approach to this tee. When I first purchased it, sure I thought it was funny and I saw it from a perspective that I, as a believer, must be confident in the fact that because my God is so great, He can fix any circumstance that I am in. (Which is true, btw). I knew I must stand firm that God is the only one who can change anything and anyone and I must turn to Him in my times of trouble.
But what about the situations of sin that I keep cycling back to? (uh oh) Dreading the consequences that are soon to follow, I drop to my knees begging the Lord to fix the situation so that I come out with victory and more importantly, without consequences. Proverbs 3:12 says that the Lord disciplines those He loves. So basically, my prayers to escape the results of the choices that I willingly made are proof that I lack understanding of how God really wants to fix things.
He truly wants our desires to match His desires. One way that we become more like Him is through His discipline and correction. If He came to our rescue every time with a magic wand, what would we learn? How would we grow and mature? Would our conviction weaken? We would no doubt find ourselves in the same situation again with the expectation that Jesus will remove our suffering and remove the consequences that came with it.
Growing up in my house, we had a chore chart on the refrigerator. If you have ever been to my house, then you know that the chore chart is still on the refrigerator. My dad created this chart so that my siblings and I would be clear of what our daily responsibilities were for the house. Along with the chart was a description of how to do the specific chore correctly. We all know that if it’s not done mommy’s way, it’s not done right. Last but not least, there was a list of consequences that we should expect if the chores weren’t done. We thought we could choose the consequence we wanted. Nope, we got the whole list at once.
If my parents did not follow through on the consequences, I am pretty sure we would develop habits to manipulate their grace. If they came home everyday and fixed the house for us and we avoided the consequences, we would not learn. Oh, but when that whipping came, we learned the lesson and it was for the better.
So, I’m going to propose something tough. How about I ask the Lord to fix it by fixing me. Yep, this is a hard prayer to pray because the refiner’s fire is hot, but the gold that comes out of the fire is pure.
Fix it, Jesus by fixing me. Amen.
Want this tee?
I got this cool tank from The Light Blonde. Check out the site for other tees and tanks: http://www.thelightblonde.com/
