Wondering Why We Wander

So with these connections and resources at our disposal, why do we keep straying?

As a part of my small group, we also participated in Timothy Keller’s study “The Reason for God”, where he sits down with people of different ethnic, racial, religious and agnostic backgrounds to discuss the “myths of Christianity”.  The study was chocked full of information, but from that study I gathered a couple of invaluable pieces of information that spoke so clearly about my own faith and who I am as a believer of God.  

• The Definition of Christians:  We’re a broken people, admitting guilt, shame, defeat, and sin.  We’re a people that recognize our self-centered and self-righteous motives as sin and seek forgiveness for these acts.  We know that we as broken humans are wrought with scars of sin and are not worthy of Christ’s love, yet He still gives it freely.

As a Christian, we recognize our faults and that we will never measure up to be worthy of the love that Christ so freely gives.  It is our human nature to sin and living in this world; we are presented with opportunities at every corner to stray.  Satan whispers doubts and fears of failure into our ears and because our flesh is weak, we believe it and so we stray.  

It is only by the grace of God that we are saved by the hand of sin and death.  But we cannot allow it to be an excuse to go on sinning.  The second bit of insight that I gathered from Keller was regarding the “rules” in which we are called to live by and how others see it as an opportunity of failure.

• Why do Christians follow the “rules”?  Aren’t they impossible to follow?  Isn’t the Bible setting them up for failure?  Christians follow “the rules” because we’ve been forgiven and received mercy and grace.  It’s our way to say to God, “this is how much I love you and what you’ve done for me”.  It’s like a budding relationship where your heart is in your throat and you start making adjustments to your daily living so to be more accommodating and pleasing to your mate because you hope that they will make the same sacrifices for you.  For Christians, the sacrifice has already been made.  It’s now our turn to do right by making sacrifices ourselves.

Renee Swopes’ book, “A Confident Heart”, also touches on grace and whether or not it’s a license to sin.  On page 187 of the book she says, “A confident woman knows that it’s not.  Instead, she realizes grace is the security of knowing God’s love is guaranteed for her because she trusts in Christ.  Really understanding His sacrificial gift accomplishes the opposite of granting a license to sin.  When we grasp what Jesus did for us, we want to return the gift of His life by offering our to Him, even if our offering isn’t perfect or even perfectly consistent.”

So I know, you’re still wondering what we can gleam from these teachings from inspirational Christian writers.  To me they’re teaching the passage from Matthew 7:24-27:

“These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock.

“But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.”

We must put our faith wholly in the one and true living God and strive to live these truths each day.  We must place our faith in something that can withstand any war or raging sea that comes upon us.  We must trust that God will carry us through our doubts, our fears and our failures.  Our feet may falter and we may fall, but as long as our Lord is our foundation, we will not be ruined.