Two dear friends, Laura and Kristen, in Peru.


Its interesting to me how many believers tend to live their lives based more on Karma than Christ-likeness.

The idea that, if we do more good than evil we will somehow please God, seems to have crept into our philosophy. We build walls of self defense around what sin we can continue to embrace, while still believing. We know that He died for our sin, and that His sacrifice covered it all. Yet we protect areas that have become a secret sanctuary to us. We return to that altar to offer ourselves, over and over.

I'm equally certain that most of us aren't even aware we have allowed such an attitude to become part of our experience.

We are creatures of habit. It is said that it takes 30 days to form or break a habit. Some of us have become so steeped in our sin that we no longer respond to the Holy Spirit when He seeks to bring conviction.

We tend to call it '2nd nature,' when we do something without thinking about it.

For too many believers, our 2nd Nature is not reflective of Christ, but of the flesh.

For us to be truly intimate with Christ, we must choose to spend significant time with Him. He is always seeking to draw us to Him, but we must choose to lay other things down for relationship to occur.

When we are dating, or married, we cannot expect the relationship to thrive if we do not invest serious time, effort, and even sacrifice. Too many choose to do what pleases self, and ignore the needs of the other.

In marriage or dating, the result of too little investment is a broken relationship. In our lives with Christ, the result is that we drag His name through places which bring Him no honor or glory.

It is nothing but grace that allows us to return.

In marriage or dating, this kind of grace is seldom given.

95% faithfulness in my marriage is not sufficient (Pastor Steve Lewis). For me to spend 5% of my time courting the affection of another woman, is 100% unfaithful. I don't want a 95% commitment from my wife, and I cannot expect her to be pleased with that from me.

We easily see the truth in this scenario, but most of us are guilty of approaching our relationship with Christ this way. We give him whatever percentage of faithfulness we feel like and expect Him to be satisfied with it.

We think with walls of defense built around our sin, that He cannot see how vile it is.

He can.

Yet, we continue on like He isn't worthy of our all.

I must stop clinging to sin that is buried beneath years of carefully constructed baffles and walls. He sees right through the maze that has taken me a lifetime to build.

I am not fooling Him.

He wants 100% of my devotion.

So does my wife.

The cool thing is, when I give Him my all, He makes it possible for me to give it to her as well.

It is said one cannot be a little bit pregnant. We must stop approaching our faith as though we can be minimal Christians.

He desires our all, and He is more than worthy of it!


dad