Refuse the Labels of the Past...

Today's Unglued Blog

Wow....SO SORRY about the big break there! Between Jamie not sleeping for 3 nights (which means I wasn't sleeping) due to her croup (a tight, barking cough that is at it's WORSE from sundown to sunup) & my sinuses acting up, I NEEDED to get some rest....so I did over the last 2 mornings (& was a little late getting up this morning).

 

Remember I told you God is calling us out -- out of darkness, out from those places we thought would never get better, out of being stuck? Well, He is....& an excellent passage that confirms God calling us out of the darkness is from 1 Peter:

 

As you come to him, the living Stone -- rejected by [humans] but chosen by God and precious to him -- you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ...you are a chose people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1 Peter 2:4-5, 9)

 

You see, Peter (which means "the rock") was born as Simon (which means "shifty"). But he did not get stuck being shifty his whole life. He let God chisel him. Peter is the one who dared to jump out of the boat and walk on water (Matthew 14:22-32). Peter was also the man that loved his Lord SO MUCH that he drew his sword & cut off the ear of the guard trying to arrest Jesus (John 18:10). But then he denies even knowing Jesus (John 18:17).

 

Despite how shifty Peter sounds to us, Jesus did not see him that way. He saw Peter as a courageous man who needed chiseling....& when chiseled, would boldly do what others would not. We get to actually see this chiseling in John 21:15-17 when Jesus ask Peter if he loves Jesus. We later see the evidence of the chiseled Peter in Acts 2:14, 40-41 as he is bold, assured, and prepared to do the work the Master created him to do....he doesn't seem so shifty anymore.

 

Peter was God's workmanship. We are God's workmanship! God is chiseling us, making us new, releasing us from our hard places--those places that make us feel so stinkin' defeated--so we can do good words. Works God has prepared for us, which means He knows best how to prepare in us the character we need to fulfill our calling.

 

Chapter 3's Memory verse is "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Ephesians 2:10

 

Wow! Will I see grace & feel grace & call it grace when I come unglued? Even when, like Peter, I deny Christ with my actions? Will I embrace the grace by which I've been saved through faith--choose to see myself as God's workmanship--& do the good work I've been called to do?

 

Will I Refuse the Labels of the Past....

 

By the way...I feel like I'm just rewriting part of this chapter. So should I even continue blogging this? OR should I just leave it to you all to read the book? All I'm doing is rewriting what Lysa said....