Living A Relaxed Life In God’s Grace

In summary of Psalm 103:13-14 it says, "As a father is kind to his children, so the Lord is kind to those who honor him. He knows what we are made of; he remembers that we are dust."

Bottom Line:
Just as parents are kind to their children, the Lord is kind to all who have fear, worship and honor him. For he knows and remembers what we are made of, how weak we can be and that we are only dust.

What this means to me:
God understands me completely.  He is fully aware of my humanity.  Furthermore he knows all my faults, fears, failures and frustrations.  I’m glad he is not expecting me to be a Superman.  This passage reminds me that I didn’t wait to love my daughter until she was mature, I loved her at every state of her development.  God loves me in the same manner, so I don’t need to listen to my unresolved guilt or unrealistic expectations.  Today I remind myself of what I know about God from before in that there is nothing I can do that will make God love me more or less than he does right now.  God’s love is always unconditional, it’s not based on what I do or don’t do.  Even as a child is learning to walk, they get up, stumble and fall, yet we don’t scold them from stumbling or falling.  God is the same, he knows that we will stumble and fall from time to time, however that doesn’t stop him from loving and providing the best for us.  When I live in union with Christ Jesus, God no longer sees my sin and holds it against me; he sees Jesus at work in my life.  When I gave Christ my life, Jesus wrapped me with his love.  God looks at Jesus and sees that Jesus is perfect; and since I’m wrapped in Him, he doesn't see your sin. This is what I believe it means to live a relaxed life in God's grace.  Today’s quiet time is very helpful considering that I did something incredibly stupid yesterday in a interaction with a business associate over a past incident (that evidently I had not forgiven him for.)  This brought me into a direct experience with the content of last Sunday’s message “The Center of Gravity” which is also the topic for the next few weeks of the Life Group I am leading.  This issue became the focus of my thoughts as the night progressed.  I did take action in the late afternoon after this happened to speak with this person.  I was not able to clear it up one-to-one, but I did leave a message asking for forgiveness for my behavior (I will still try to link up with this individual one-on-one.)  Even though I was wrong in my behavior and I know that God forgives, especially when we seek to clear it up, the enemy tried to use this situation to bring me down with guilt and feeling of not being good enough.  I laid it at God’s feet and reminded myself of the positive, I knew that I should not dwell on the negative aspect of this as that would further direct my behavior.  So today, I will remind myself that God will not love me anymore or any less for what I do.  He knows that Christ living in me will help bring about maturity.  I know this example will live on in my mind as a reminder and has helped me realize that there is some things that I have not forgiven others for.  I need to seek these things out so that I can forgive and let them go.  I really don’t want them to affect my moving forward.