Constrained

 

I recently decided to read the same chapter (Romans 12) for a month and see what would happen.  These are some thoughts.  I feel like it might help someone.  I know it changed me.  

You can find my first post about it here: 70 Faces

-Joel 

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To start out, let’s read Romans 12 again…don’t even pretend you don’t need to…

1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

3 I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

4-6 In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.

6-8 If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.

9-10 Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

11-13 Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

14-16 Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.

17-19 Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.”

20-21 Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.

(The Message)

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One of the parts that stands out to me is this idea Paul throws out in verse 17.

“Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you’ve got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,” says God. “I’ll take care of it.””

Let’s be honest, we all wish this verse was different.

I wish it read, “Pray to Me, then when the timing is gloriously perfect, I will teach you how to destroy your enemies.  I will even inspire you with a devastating comeback that you think of BEFORE you walk away from them.  They will cry.  Possibly even repent right there because it will be so amazing…”

I could really get behind a verse like that…

It’s the hardest thing for me, lately, to take my anger and hate and actively place it in God’s hands.

To move my heart from death to life.

I want so badly to cram God’s suggestion box with all my rants, but these verses of Paul highlight in bold neon the reality that I forget so quickly: God’s patience is not an exclusive trait to just my life.   He is for us all.  I don’t have a say in who gets more or less of His love.  He deals with us far gentler than our mountains of mistakes have ever deserved, and no matter how high a mountain we build, Jesus’ compassion will always drown its peaks in grace.

He can’t help it.

To act any other way would cause Jesus to cease to be God.  You cannot separate Jesus from grace.  It’s not a part of him, it is Him.  There is an enormous difference.

This perspective reorients the playing field by revealing all over again that no one is beyond the need of grace.  God’s standard is so high that it demands a savior.  Nothing and no one else can bring us all back.  Like the beautiful song says “oh to Grace how great a debtor, daily I am constrained to be…”

Oh how that moves me.

It peels back the layers of pride, and in our surrender, we advance.  We grow into more of who God longs for us to be and how He pleads with us to act.  To trust Him with our wounds and seek to bind up the wounds we cause others.

Pray this with me…

God I need you as much today as I did yesterday, possibly more.  Teach me today what it means to hold life with open hands. Help me to remove the conditions I want to place on your love both for me and for others.  Amen and amen.