Personal Responsibility

Hebrews 12:4

In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

Good morning Zebras,

Take your faith seriously. God will not be mocked.

We are fools to think that we can accept God’s free gift of salvation and continue to live anyway we want. We are foolish to not take our sins more seriously.

Yesterday when I was walking I noticed that many of the cars who passed me did not stop at the stop sign. There were a few “California stops” but there were some people who didn’t even slow down.

“Heck,” I thought “compared to these people, I am a model driver.”

But then God reminded me the standard is not what other people do, but what the law says.

The same is true of our Christian walk. It does not matter if you are better than every single Christian and nonChristian you know. That is not the standard. The standard is Christ.

And there we all fall short.

Nick and I got into a discussion the other day about whether or not he was really trying in school. He thinks he is I think he could do better. I told him he was deluding himself if he thinks he is giving it his all and that he needed to take personal responsibility for his actions and not pretend he is trying harder than he is.

Then God had the same chat with me.

I went downstairs and opened my book to this passage: We must face the fact that we have a personal responsibility for our walk of holiness. One Sunday our pastor in his sermon said words to this effect. “You can put away that habit that has mastered you if you truly desire to do so.” Because he was referring to a particular habit which was no problem to me, I quickly agreed with him. But then the Holy Spirit said to me. “And you can put away the sinful habits that plague you if you will accept your personality responsibility for them.” Acknowledging that I did have this responsibility turned out to be a milestone for me in my own pursuit of holiness.”

Love,
Jill