The Message

I figured out a way to get it all done, too bad its not sustainable. I have been staying up til 12 or 1:00 am, catching up, and this morning I got up at 5:30. Its so sweet to have the house to myself, do ONE thing at a time, and be able to think through a complete thought beginning to end without inturuption. Too bad that my mental health goes straight to the toilet without adequate rest... (not that its a long trip.)

One of the greatest achievements of this burst of energy is that I found my copy of The Message. It was on the bookshelf. Now who thought that was a sensible idea?!! So, I looked up its version of Romans 8 1-4 and its very inspiring.

" with the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, He personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The law always ended up being used as a band-aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

(Now I think I am going past verse 4, but this next section really speaks to me personally.)

"those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them- living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.........

So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!"

Honestly, when I read this stuff I wonder where most of our Religious beliefs come from. Let's get back on track! This is an unbelievably liberating message. I have no doubt this message is for me personally because when I was a child, God woke me one morning with this Bible reference clearly imprinted on my mind. I didn't look it up immediately and read it, nor did I understand it for a very long time (I may just be getting it now, some25 years later....) but the implications are life altering.

I understand all too well about personal obsession and the dead end that it ultimately offers. God give me the grace and courage to embrace the wide open.