Do you want to Love Life
and see Good Days?

Loving life…seeing good days. <sigh> What does it feel like—to love life, to see good days? I know what I want it to feel like. My heart pictures a soft sandy beach, with a sunshiny, blue sky…there’s a slight breeze, the sound of gentle waves.

But, more often than not, we dread life and days are hard. We are filled with anxiety. We grieve. We struggle. Darkness seems to follow us. This is living under The Fall.

[God] said to the woman,
“I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy,
and in pain you will give birth.
And you will desire to control your husband,
but he will rule over you.”

And to the man he said,
“Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree
whose fruit I commanded you not to eat,
the ground is cursed because of you.
All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
It will grow thorns and thistles for you,
though you will eat of its grains.
By the sweat of your brow
will you have food to eat
until you return to the ground
from which you were made.
For you were made from dust,
and to dust you will return.”
(Genesis 3:16-19).

Because of The Fall, we get sick, we fight with one another, we struggle against ourselves, and we die. We have no peace. Paul said, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned” (Romans 5:12, NLT).

But God had a better plan.

“For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ (Romans 5:17, NLT).

Living in triumph over sin and death is
winning the war against the flesh…

We are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17). We are free from sin (Romans 6:18). Yet—and this is the part that always bothered me—I STILL struggle with sin. I have tried to ignore it, tried to embrace it, tried to run from it…but sin hounds me. I have wondered, “What does it say about me, if I keep making the same mistakes? If I struggle with temptation and it seems that I lose more often than not?”

For many years, fighting the flesh meant I took my eyes off Jesus and all that He had done, was doing, and would do for me. In looking at my inabilities, I lost sight of His ability. I missed the forest for the trees…I missed the redemption, for the sin. When we focus on our failures, we can’t see His triumph.

We like immediate results, but God is in this for the long run, for eternity.

The Lord absolutely will not fail in His plans to conform us to His image (Romans 8:29). Even now, He is at work (2 Corinthians 3:18). We are part of His process to change us, not our own.

Still, we might wonder, why does God allow Christians to struggle with sin?

Remember the sinful woman who washed the feet of Jesus with her hair—her actions raised more than a few eyebrows. But here is what Jesus noticed, “I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.” (Luke 7:47, NLT).

We, who have been forgiven much, should love much. As God is weeding out the sin in our hearts, He is planting seeds of love, seeds of peace. We are His work, in progress. And as we are filled more and more with Him, with love, with peace, we are given an important assignment: we are to seek peace…and pursue it. In fact, we are called to be Peacemakers.

Are you a peace-maker? Or a peace-breaker? Are you still searching for peace with God? Tomorrow, I’ll share the one crucial step we often miss in our search for peace, which is the foundation of a #MoreAbundantLife.