I have well, unhelpful habits I've been trying to shed for years. How about you?
Oh, I make good resolutions and they last a week or so. Then I slip back into my old routines, a.k.a., my old, comfortable habits.
That ones I just said I wanted to break.
Take one minor example from my list. I don't consider myself a particularly messy person but, well, stuff accumulates around me.
When our last child left home I expected our kitchen table and counters finally would stay clear. I envisioned living in a somewhat model home, with boring housework only a distant memory. My workspace would be a streamlined marvel of organization.
Imagine my shock to find things still piling up.
It's as one friend explained with her, "Law of the Flat Surface:" Any flat surface automatically attracts clutter, which will automatically attract more of the same.
Does that ever happen in your home?
It's worse when you're a writer
We writers clip articles from newspapers and magazines. We scribble notes to ourselves on whatever's handy, like paper napkins, to be sure we don't lose an idea.
Here's the problem. Somebody needs to sort those clipped-together piles and categorize and file. Technology helps, but 'ya still gotta do it.
Guess who.
At least once a month I vow I will never let it get ahead of me again.
At least once a month I fail.
I tell myself life and people get in the way and always take precedence. That sounds all noble and good, but it's not. It's my usual, comfortable excuse.
You see the problem here
The fact is this is who I am. Human. Humans are like this.
Aren't we?
It can feel overwhelming when we count up all the ways we miss the mark and let people down, even the ones we love.
Let ourselves down.
The Apostle Paul's spoke of that, too, in Romans 7:19-20:
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
Sin? Oh, yes, that which keeps us from doing what God would have us do. As Jesus said in Matthew 5:48:
"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Perfect? If you're anything like me, you can't even live up to your own standards, let alone the standards of a perfect God.
So, my friends, if salvation depends on us, we have no hope.
That's why we call the Gospels the Good News
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament. They penned the story of Jesus' life, from before birth to after He died on the cross and rose again.
This verse is what many call, "the Gospel in a nutshell."
(Jesus said) "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." --John 3:16.
Even if we understand nothing else, these words tell the story of salvation.
It's that simple--and that glorious. If we have faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior from sin we need not live in fear of God's wrath over our failures. Jesus paid with His death on the cross for our sins.
Even those bad habits we have yet to overcome.
Lovingly,
Lenore
