God is Still For Us

This is the third shot I have made at writing a story of virtually no consequence. To save you the details, it was about a coworker whose lack of effort was met by my anger and un-gospel-ish behavior toward him. I was going to tell you about my encounter with James 1:20 this morning. The verse reads "The anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God."

If I may be perfectly honest, the story was overly complicated and so dreadfully pointless that I could hardly stomach reading the first installment of it. I realized about half-way through that my words were not so much gospel as venting of frustration. Seriously, who needs to spend time reading about how I was frustrated with a dude that I work with?

I would much rather you read about the gospel than to read pointless ramblings. I would rather you fix your mind on the fact that God became man, lived our lives for us, died our deaths for us, rose to new life to give us real life, sits at the Father's right hand right now and prays for us.

I would rather you find in my writing the only thing that is really important, that is the person and work of Jesus and his current, unchangeable position as God-for-us.

Over the past few weeks, I have had a hard time feeling that these things are true. A good example would have been the now deleted story about my quick temper the other night. But do you know what makes me really happy as I write these words?

That has not changed the truth one bit.

My own struggle to grasp the gospel has not made the gospel any less true. The fact that you and I have a hard time accepting the grace of Christ on a moment-to-moment basis does not change God's attitude toward any of us who are in Christ.

For all the times we have looked inward and wallowed in confusion, despair, emptiness, and disbelief, let us take a look out of ourselves, if only for a brief moment.

God has promised that even these times will work together for our good. God is for us because of Jesus.