The way the seems right...

This past week has been a busy week. We spent most every night working at the Smith County fair, where we did face painting, made balloon animals and handed out water. We also did promotion for The Power Team coming to Carthage this week. We are so excited about this event and hope that God will use it to reach many in Smith County for Him!
To get ready for this event, we went today to help tear down and clean up things left over from the fair. We got there and with our greatest effort we set out to tear down 3 rows of back to back animal pens (huge metal animal pens). So we work and work and finally get the first of the 3 rows finished in about half an hour, and we take a break. As we are resting, a man arrives and explains to us that we have stacked the gates to the pens and the sides of the pens the wrong way! Not only that but all of these sides connect together by poles and we had stacked the poles in the container the wrong way! We had done everything the absolutely opposite of how it should have been done! So, of course we start switching everything around to the way it is supposed to be stored and the man goes off and when he returns he is driving a forklift, which he uses to life the gates to then pens which were incredibly heavy and our group had been moving 2-3 people at a time, and then lift the stacks of sides that we made. Needless to say we quickly realized that it was much easier to do this job the way this man was going about it than to continue on in our own way of cleaning this up. As we got closer and closer to finishing we we constantly reminded that this way was much easier, as we talked about it this verse came up
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."
Proverbs 14:12
This whole event was a perfect picture of the fact that so many times we try to accomplish things on our own when God calls us to seek after Him and follow His plan. My plans and my best efforts can never compare with what God has in store if I will seek after Him! As I spend time with Him daily I grow to love Him more and I see that obedience to Him is vital.

There is a way that seems right and a way that is right. The way that is right is only found by seeking after Christ.

Graffiti Clean-up

So yesterday I was able to go with the Student Ministry @ Hope to do graffiti clean-up. The students had already done some graffiti clean-up in the area the previous day and the goal was to go back and get the rest done.

As we were painting, I kept thinking about the whole situation and how great an analogy could be drawn to our lives as Christians and graffiti clean-up. So here goes...

When we first come to Christ confessing that our way is wrong and that His way is the only way and we trust Him as our Savior He forgives us and chooses to remember our sin no more! The picture in my mind now is the wall that we painted ( I wish I had pictures to show you - didn't have my camera). Before it was covered in graffiti, for this analogy - sin, but then after we painted it it was clean you could not even see the old graffiti underneath. Now please understand this is not a perfect analogy. God has the power to completely get rid of our sin. It is GONE, unlike the graffiti, which is still there just covered by a layer of paint. However, the picture is the same. The wall is clean of imperfections.

As we were painting the point was brought up that this would probably have graffiti on it again within a short amount of time. This is true, and this also parallels our lives so perfectly! After we become a Christian, there will still be times, many times that we mess up and sin. That is just like us painting graffiti all over a wall that God has cleaned for us.

Our God is patient and loving and just and if we confess the sin in our life to Him, He will clean the graffiti off again. In NO WAY does this give us the right to simply do whatever we want because we have this promise of forgiveness! For the believer, this is never the desire! The desire is to become more and more like Christ.

"So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace...But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them so not belong to him at all.)" Romans 8:6, 9