Sometimes I get all weird and judgmental on myself for working so slow and not finishing some things and for having ideas that I don’t seem able to execute.
Then to escape the self-condemnation I’ll jump off the cliff into Jesus’ welcoming arms where he loves me no matter what. And I can rest there and quit trying, which is good, but I can also go so far in trying to escape a sense of failure that I end up landing on, ‘It really doesn’t matter if I do anything or not.’ Which would be ignoring that Ephesians 2.10 created-for-good-works thing.
This seems to be out of whack and a pretty wide swing for a person to be like that. So to try to stay out of the ditch in this area I have another little reminder card:
Creating things, producing and finishing things, counts.
Now, you can go too far with that, and many do, ending up with ‘you are what you do.’ You don’t want your identity to be what you do. You don’t want to define yourself and your value and worth by what you do. God’s already assigned your worth in creating you, dying for you, and when you believe, in making you a partaker of his divine nature.
But you also don’t want to say that what you do and produce doesn’t count.
Could God have existed and been all that he is in his attributes, and NOT created the universe? NOT created people and not allowed sin and a devil? Or does who he is naturally lead to what he does and to his working and creating?
Who God is and what he’s doing produces something. So something should also be created and produced by those he made in his image.
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A short series of reminders for when you start getting off-track. Before you get stuck in the mud, get back on the main road. These are not the basics of the Christian life and they’re not definitive – they’re just lists of reminders that have helped me. The first two are HERE and HERE. The third is HERE.
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