Bible Verse of the Day


2 Peter 1:5-8


For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Friday, January 28, 2011

A Peek at the Past

As a writer, I really enjoy words. I love it when I find a phrase that jumps off the page at me. I found one such phrase this morning in my reading. It was, ‘…his heart was simply encrusted with rebellion.’ If you don’t get a visual from that, read it again because it paints a vivid word picture.

I’ve mentioned before there is a small trickle of rebellion still lingering in me of which I am fully aware. It used to be a raging river. Without boring you with detail, I had a difficult road to traverse as a child growing into a teen while forced to live with abuse. I learned to stand-up for myself to maintain any emotional survival. Any opposition was declared rebellion. Sometimes it actually was. Suffice it to say, I did not (as the comment goes) ‘go along to get along’. I learned to take a stand; I became a ‘principle fighter’. Even then I knew the difference between standing up for what I believed in and rebellion for the sake of rebelling. I was proficient at both.

Maybe that’s why the phrase ‘…his heart was encrusted with rebellion’ resonated so soundly with me. Maybe its impact was in recognizing a reflection of my former self more than the turn of a poetic phrase. Who knows? God has tempered my attitudes, my mouth, my actions…every area of my life. For those of you that only know me from this time in my life and yet still consider me ‘taxing’ to deal with, you don’t even know the start of it. All I can say is that God has done a mighty work in me and I have faith that He will complete what He has started.

My rebellion these days is largely limited to going In the Out door at Wal-Mart. That may seem a silly thing to you but for me, it’s my way of standing up for myself and declaring the infamous, invisible THEY can’t tell me what to do. There it is - my trickle of rebellion.

I’m thankful I saw my page jumping, ‘…his heart was encrusted with rebellion’ line today. It reminded me from whence I came and how much God has done in my life. I am far down the road in my Christian walk from the hard-headed, independent thinking, soapbox cause-preaching rebel I once was but I am not anywhere near where I need to be. Thank You, God, for the reminder and for the peek at how far You have brought me.

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