Blessings siblings,
I pray you are well. As we continue to grow in God’s grace and wisdom, we recognise that this walk is neither for the perfect nor the perfectionist, as we all fall short of God’s standard. Rather, this walk works for those who remain focused on Christ. Consider Today’s Holy Nougat.
Psalms 73:1-3 NIV
[1] Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.
[2] But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold.
[3] For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
Don’t Stay in the Mess
One of the things I love about the Bible, especially the Psalms, is that it keeps the human condition real. So, although we venerate some biblical characters, it hardly ever comes from what we read about their lives. This assures us that God doesn’t call the perfect.
Rather, as we grow in grace, God perfects the called through God’s Spirit dwelling within.
Self-Check
Are we among those who wear a mask of perfection, believing that if we wear the mask long enough, we will be seen as perfect by others?
Deeper Dive
The psalmist calls out his lifestyle as being less than God’s standard. He notes that it is easy to lose our bearings on this journey of faith. It can be a simple as taking our eyes off Y’shua, and opting to focus on other people and objects. That shift in focus can be deadly on multiple levels, when we move from a glance to engagement.
Think of social media, many of us began with pure motives, then found ourselves swept away by the current of scrolling through others’ stories while attempting to be relevant.
Or of life in community: whether we study, work, or are home-making. Many of us get tricked into believing, like the hamster on the wheel, that our worth is attached to our social identity. We find that we use people or cheat to be the to student. We backbite and withhold information from our colleagues in the office. We over-invest in the material in the vain thought that it compensates for the lessons/gifts we failed to receive in our childhood. These are examples, and might not depict our reality, but we get the gist. The most innocuous spaces can be hosts to insidious sin that detracts from praising God.
Our psalmist also got caught up – at least momentarily – in the deadly trap of envious self-comparison, while people watching. He even found himself questioning God’s justice in the process, as he deepened his interaction with envy.
But, the psalmist overcame. That’s what qualifies him as righteous. He internalised Proverbs 24:16, which states that the righteous fall seven times and rise again; but the wicked remain in engaging with evil. That’s why we place our bodies under subjection to God’s Spirit (see more in 1 Corinthians 9:27), ensuring that we focus on avoiding evil or lying talk as stated in Psalm 34:13.
That’s what makes us ‘pure in heart‘. We can’t purify ourselves. That is the work of God’s indwelling Spirit. For God’s Spirit to purify us, we must give God’s Spirit permanent access to our lives. Especially those spaces we’ve pretended are perfect. When we find ourselves attempting to take over, we yield once more, and again, and again … confessing our sins, and seeking forgiveness.
We will find God’s grace isn’t like ours. God does not treat us like our sins deserve (see Psalm 103:10). It doesn’t, however, give us leeway to take God for granted. Rather, we are invited to be so awed by God’s graciousness that we keep seeking to deepen our relationship.
Point to Ponder
How deep is our love for Christ? Can we see a correlation between the depth of our love and our capacity to rejoice?
Selah
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May all we seek be found in Christ
