Oh To Be Wise Meditations

Sin feels good in the moment, why stop? It is so easy to use grace as an excuse for our humanity. Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil. Though you grind a fool in a mortar, grinding them like grain with a pestle, you will not remove their folly from them. You cannot separate fools from their foolishness, even though you grind them like grain with mortar and pestle. This is how the judgment works: the light has come into the world, but people love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds are evil. Nothing in the flesh produces good things. Even if it feels good and is desirable, even if its intelligible and of worth, the question should always be, it is holy? Humanity's problem as a whole is not that we don't have light, but that we love darkness instead. Left to our own devices and schemes we would rather choose evil, and that should scare you. The presence of God is in our lives is critical to our livelihood and purpose. Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You followed the ways of this world and obeyed the devil. He rules the world, and his spirit has power over everyone who doesn't obey God. Once we were also ruled by the selfish desires of our bodies and minds. We had made God angry, and we were going to be punished like everyone else.But God's mercy is so abundant, and his love for us is so great, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! God raised us from death to life with Christ Jesus, and he has given us a place beside Christ in heaven. e did this to demonstrate for all time to come the extraordinary greatness of his grace in the love he showed us in Christ Jesus. As Paul said in 1 Tim. 1:16, But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners. Then others will realize that they, too, can believe in him and receive eternal life. Unbelievable that God has raised people like you and me from the dead of our sins. Having us set as royalty with Christ on high even before we prove our loyalty. We all will fail God in so many ways, and He is OK with it. Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin? This overcoming of sinful pleasures and love of darkness is a process of sanctification. Somethings you will leap over in victory, and other things you will trample over and fall. Everything depends on what God decides to do, and he can either have pity on people or make them stubborn. Someone may ask, "How can God blame us, if he makes us behave in the way he wants us to?" But, my friend, I ask, "Who do you think you are to question God? Does the clay have the right to ask the potter why he shaped it the way he did? Doesn't a potter have the right to make a fancy bowl and a plain bowl out of the same lump of clay?"God wanted to show his anger and reveal his power against everyone who deserved to be destroyed. But instead, he patiently put up with them. He did this by showing how glorious he is when he has pity on the people he has chosen to share in his glory. Whether Jews or Gentiles, we are those chosen ones, just as the Lord says in the book of Hosea, "Although they are not my people, I will make them my people. I will treat with love those nations that have never been loved. "Once they were told, 'You are not my people.' But in that very place they will be called children of the living God." Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the Israelite's be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved. And Isaiah said the same thing in another place: “If the LORD of Heaven’s Armies had not spared a few of our children, we would have been wiped out like Sodom, destroyed like Gomorrah.” What does all of this mean? It means that the Gentiles were not trying to be acceptable to God, but they found that he would accept them if they had faith. But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not achieved the righteousness of the law. And why not? Because they did not depend on faith but on what they did. And so they stumbled over the "stumbling stone", just as God says in the Scriptures, "Look! I am placing in Zion a stone to make people stumble and fall. But those who have faith in that one will never be disappointed." For the LORD will carry out his sentence upon the earth quickly and with finality.” All were meant to stumble and fall in need of grace found in Jesus. Lord, we need you lift us out of our darkness and give us new desires that come from faith in you. Our sinful habits and desires keep us in bondage to sin and death. LORD, sustain me as you promised, that I may live! Do not let my hope be crushed by folly my ways. Meditate Ps. 37:24

https://biblehub.com/psalms/37-24.htm