I have been casting about looking
for something to write about, to post in Calvary’s Thread, for weeks now as
well as something for Iron Side Up and PAR and have little success to show for
the casting. The struggle is not necessarily over a lack of material, there was
Mission Arizona, church each Sunday, riding to work and little jaunts around
town, and I spent two days in PAR’s first destination taking notes and yet,
there has been no writing. I feel so strongly that I should be writing; so much
so that sometimes I think that if I’m not writing or working at it then I am
distracted, to the point that even sleep seems a waste of time. So then, why am
I not writing? Certainly the responsibilities of work and maintaining a home
and family take a lot of time and cannot logically be set aside. Indeed, if I
were to set them aside, what then would I write about? Abandoning myself and my
loved ones? Not likely.
This past Sunday was Music
Appreciation Sunday at LCPC and the Romans scripture was read as part of Pastor
Wilson’s sermon about Self Control as one of the Fruits of the Spirit and off I
ran with reading more of Romans than I have in some time. Self control; I
sorely lack it and thus what I do is not what I want to be doing. Putting aside
sleeping, eating, working, and home responsibilities I still have hours that I
can devote to story telling. My biggest enemy is time wasting and the biggest
chunk of that is in front of the TV and then the other are games on my “smart”
phone. How can I be saved from myself, or can I? I can, but not by myself or in
myself but only through God’s grace can I change patterns that I’ve set up for
decades. It doesn’t help that I have such low self-esteem when it comes to
writing and believing that it makes a difference making avoidance of failure a
favorite pastime. God has not made this directive easy.
My answer came later in Romans 7,
good of Paul to provide the answer to the question, no?
Romans 7: 21 – 25 “So I find this
law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my
inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging
war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at
work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body
that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus
Christ our Lord!”
In light of that, I need to do
several things:
1 –Believe that I delight in
God’s law in my inner being and feed that consistently and the well will not be
so dry and I will that much closer to the creative nature of God.
2 – Believe that I am delivered
by Jesus Christ and that He continues to deliver me and act like it. Walk away
from those things I hate and cling to those things I love.
3 – Don’t be satisfied with token
attempts, cry out to God with continued trips to the foot of the cross in
search of Calvary’s Thread.
4 – Believe that what I’m doing
has merit, even if just to connect myself more firmly to His Grace.
In His grip - jj white
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