Grace

Thanksgiving and Christmas are on the way, and for Christians it's a time to give thanks to God for what He's done for us and in our lives. For me, this year's time is one where I have started to internalize more deeply the grace that God has given me.

It's so easy to feel shame when I make a mistake. And while it can be good to pray against whatever sin is going on, it has implicitly caused me to focus more on my sin than on God's goodness. Rather, I should turn my focus away from my mistakes and toward God. I heard a quote at church last week that said, "For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Jesus." Wow. What a concept. While I'm still making mistakes (and who isn't?), I have started to pray less against my sin and more for God to simply transform my heart to enjoy Him more.

An example of this took place in my life over the first two years of college. While I had great friends, I spent much of this time trying to "gain acceptance in the party scene." While I did not party or drink as much as most people, I still focused too much on trying to break in to this scene. And over the course of my sophomore year, that's exactly what happened. I had access to many of the parties around campus. But during a party in someone's backyard one Saturday night in the spring, God hit me in the head with a realization: THIS IS GETTING BORING. These parties that I had wanted for so long seemed all the same. I had been praying against too much drinking for a while, but God didn't treat this symptom. Instead, He got to the root of the problem. He transformed my heart and changed my desires so that I simply didn't want the party scene anymore. That summer, God placed me in St. Louis with YouthWorks, and my life was never the same.

God has given His people grace. Let us focus less on reducing our own mistakes and instead turn the focus on God, for Him to transform our hearts and our desires.