Unfailing Love

Thoughts from my reading in Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy by Paul David Tripp. Devotional is indented.

For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. Psalm 51:16

I wish I would live with You in view;
Eyes to Your glory
Ears for Your wisdom
Heart for Your grace.
But I live with me in view.
Eyes to my kingdom
Ears for my opinion
Heart captured by my will.

Isn’t that the battle we live in every day? As a Christian I want to please God but even on the best of days I find myself more wrapped up in my concerns than in what pleases God.

So I don't find pleasure in Your glory,
I don't delight in Your law.
But my heart doesn't rest;
I know there's a better way.
I know You are God
And I am not.

That is the yearning of every true Christian. We know there is more; we want to be free from ourselves. We want His kingdom to come in our lives and His will to be done in us…as it is in heaven.

My sin is more than
Bad behavior
A bad choice
Wrong words.
My sin is a violation of the relationship
That I was meant to have with You.
My sin is an act
Where I replace You
With something I love more.

Every time we do that we are disappointed. We live unsatisfied lives, realizing that we messed up again, were fooled again.

Help me
To see
To acknowledge
To weep
And say,
"Against You, You only have I sinned
And done what is evil in Your sight."
And then help me to rest
In Your mercy
In Your tender mercy
In Your faithful love,
Even as the war goes on.

That is the thing we need to remember. The war goes on, even if we have victory one day. The next day it starts up again and we have to fight against ourselves and what we want.

A question from the meditation

Where does the little kingdom of self tend to get in the way of the work of God's kingdom in your life? (See Matthew 6:19 - 34)

I live a life of limits. I know what I can’t do, what I am afraid to do. And sometimes God wants me to do something big for Him. Maybe not something that anyone else would think is big, but it is huge for me because my kingdom can’t support or envision it.

Philip
.

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