What a week

Oy Vey! What a week it has been. I have flitted from one disaster to the next. Every hour of every day (plus 8 more) has been filled to capacity.

Good news: E has been released by her worker's comp doctor to return to full duty.

Most of the scripture I have been reading lately as well as the messages from Alistair Begg have revolved around the topic of God's Expectations. Simply put, God doesn't overlook deliberate sin forever. At some point, He allows the consequences of our choices to overtake us. What does this mean for non-Christians? Nothing as this only applies to those that know God, call themselves His children, know what is right and still walk in deliberate disobedience. A lot of the churches today down play (or ignore) the idea of God's judgment and wrath. What we as Christians forget is that God never changes - the God of the Old Testament is the same God we have in the New Testament.

Are we forgiven? Absolutely! And God wants us to walk in the paths of righteousness not sin. Does God expect us to be perfect? Nope, and He still expects us to work at it.

It is a lot like our children. When they disobey the first time, there is a lot of grace. We carefully instruct them in why the action was wrong and what action is right. We allow for mistakes and failures. At each failure (over the years, not the next day), the consequences tend to get a little stronger. As they mature, we expect more mature behavior and decisions. At some point, if the behavior fails to improve, we remove them from our home (at age 18 hopefully). Are they free to return? Sure - if the behavior changes.

God is the same way. As we fail to learn, He allows greater and greater consequences to occur until finally He will remove Himself from fellowship with us (actually, we can no longer fellowship with Him due to the barrier of sin). We are always free to repent and return and God is faithful to restore us. He is not, however, willing to tolerate deliberate sin.

Words to think on