Unchained Melodye

He’s still working on me
To make me what I ought to be
It took Him just a week to make the moon and the stars
The sun and the earth and Jupiter and mars.
How loving and patient He must be ….
‘Cause He’s still working on me!

The other day I was complaining to Brent (as I do) about someone. I was using words like “lack of integrity, deceitful, lying”. After he let me go on for a while, he gently and wisely guided my thought process. “Mel, I choose to believe that this is not an issue of integrity, but of maturity.” Wow! Believe it or not, I bit my lip and thought about that. I came to the conclusion that the difference in those to ways of thinking was huge! By the way, it usually is when it comes to Brent and me! 🙂 Anyway, I saw it this time – the one meant that there was intentional deceit. The other meant that God was still working in the person’s life. If that’s the case, then I was condemning myself as well because I know He’s certainly still working on me!

In all of this grace-based learning I’m doing, I’m not doing as much grace-based living as I should. My daddy used to say that the Bible gave permission to judge a person’s actions, but it does not give permission for me to judge their motives. As I’ve thought through this, 1 Corinthians 13 came to my mind again. I have to admit, I trip up on some of the verses about love in that passage. It says that love is patient. Love does not keep a record of wrongs. Love believes all things. Love hopes all things. The truth is, I still don’t love others like I should – with God-love. My mind says: believe someone who gives me no reason to? put hope in someone who has never indicated change? That’s such a struggle for me. I tend to decide what a person means by what they say or do. That’s really not my job. That’s God’s – He know their heart and I don’t.

The Word says that real love believes all things and hopes all things. That’s the kind of love I can have only when living in the power of the resurrected Savior and Sustainer! So as tomorrow approaches, I am celebrating… because the power that raised Jesus from the dead is offered to me daily. I want to live out the love and grace I’m learning. Sometimes I think that I can’t do it. And the reality is that I can’t – not without Him.

To all those who have found the power of Jesus and to those still on the journey to find it … remember that He doesn’t give up on us…. Happy Easter!