Start from the right place – a place of grace

I’ve recently been learning about starting from the right place. (And for those of you who read my last blog post, this was written in January and I'm now 'taking the cling film off'!)

So often I feel condemned and a failure for my lack of love and service for the Lord. He’s been showing me this happens when I start from the wrong place.

The wrong place I keep starting from is a place of legalism where I think I have to do certain things to please God. I’m a great believer in discipline and persevering when things are hard and following through with your commitments (all good things). So when I decide for example on a plan of a certain amount of Bible reading or time in prayer, I charge in with a huge amount of determination and will power. And I can get quite a distance out of my resources. But this is what I find:

1) It becomes a burden – a plate to keep spinning, a ‘box’ to keep ticking, a ‘thing’ on the ‘to do’ list

2)Eventually I trip up, I mess up, I fail and end up feeling condemned and rubbish that my love for God is so small I can’t even do ‘x’.

And despite hearing many messages about grace, I somehow struggle to think they apply to me and my particular failures and weaknesses.

Somehow I need to break free from the legalism of works that I’ve turned my service into and start again from a different place: a place of grace.

The place of grace says I am loved, I am accepted, saved and forgiven, even if I do nothing. “Just receive my love” says grace. Then, if I truly let myself believe and accept his grace, I desire to express my love to God in some way. For example, I want to know him more and spend time reading his word.

The external action -  reading the Bible regularly – is the same as before. And yet the motivation is love rather than legalism.

So what happens on the day I don’t read the Bible? If I’m coming from the place of grace then I’m secure in knowing his love for me never depended on my performance anyway. His love for me flows from an infinite resource of grace and mercy that is not ruffled by my ups and downs.

I’ve tried to express it in these two diagrams:

Thank you Father for your great grace. Help me receive it until I spill over with it in my life. Help me break free from destructive legalistic cycles of performance. Amen.

Take the cling film off!

I've not posted anything on this blog for about a month.  I have been learning loads and have just counted that I have 13 posts 'half done' in my 'blog' folder on the computer.  

For me the 'easy' bit is when I feel God is showing me something, to write it all down in a higgledy piggledy mixed up sort of way, throwing in all sorts of different thoughts and other related stuff as it occurs to me.  So I write it all down and type it all up and think, "That needs some work before I can publish that." Which is true, it does.

However, then the perfectionist in me gets into a panic about not getting it 'right' and makes me feel like I'd rather do nothing than do a bad job. And the bit of me that wants to get my self-worth from the approval of others starts to panic about people's potential reactions to the post.  And the bit of me that wants to get my significance from my post making a difference in others' lives says "What if people read this and feel it was a waste of time and don't find it helpful at all?" And so what I've written gets stuck in the 'in process' stage.

But this weekend I went on my church's weekend away and God spoke to me very clearly through a dream someone shared.  In their dream there was a fridge which had lots of containers with cling film on in it. These containers were left over food that the person had cling filmed to use later.  But they hadn't gone back to them and they were going stale and mouldy and would soon need to be thrown out.

God showed me that these containers are just like my half written blog posts.  When He teaches me things and 'feeds' me, there is more than enough. And the 'more than enough' stuff if meant to be shared and given away to bless others.  He showed me that by not sharing what He's showing me, I'm becoming like a fridge full of leftover food that is going off. Not pleasant.

So often I want the Lord to 'show me what to do'. This weekend He said, "I've shown you what I want you to do already. You don't need a fresh word of instruction, you just need to get on with doing it."

The bit where I go back through what I've written before and try to make it more clear and focused; where I cut out the waffle and clarify the vague: that's hard work. It takes concentration and determination. It takes discernment to decide what's good and what's not. It takes discipline to keep going until it's finished. It takes courage to hit 'publish'. And it isn't as exciting as getting something fresh from God and scribbling it all down in excitement.

So here I am, seeking to be obedient to what he has already told me, getting on with the hard work of actually following through with sharing what God is teaching me.

God also reminded me through the speakers at the weekend away that it isn't my job for what I write to make a difference in anyone's life. That's God job. My part is simply to be faithful in sharing and passing on what He has given me. That really helped take a burden I couldn't possibly carry off my shoulders.

Father, may You in your mercy use this blog to help and encourage others who read it, to remember what You have already spoken to them about. Give them the grace, courage and determination to obey - to sacrificially lay down their lives in service to you in whatever you have created them for.  Amen.

And as Mary said to the servants at the wedding banquet: "Do whatever he tells you" (John 2:5).