Not The Good Guy

 "One surefire way to know you're starting to grasp the message of grace is when you're finally able to admit that you're not the good guy - that yo never were and apart from grace never will be. In other words, when you finally find yourself being honest about who you are. The freedom of the gospel is the freedom to stop pretending you are anything but a fellow Zacchaeus, a sinner in need of a savior."

 -Tullian Tchividjian, One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace For An Exhausted World, Page 133
   

Revelation of Me

Last week I fasted one day. Nothing spectacular, just skipping two meals.  I was miserable!

I had a headache. My stomach was growling. The work day was going so slow.  I was grumpy. I was irritable. Once again I thought, as I do every time I fast: "I hate fasting, because fasting makes me grumpy."

Then I had a revelation.

Fasting does not make me grumpy - Fasting reveals that I AM grumpy! Fasting uncovers the real me, the irritable grumpy true me, the essential me when un-medicated by food.  Fasting uncovers my mask of niceness, my facade of self-control. Inside, under that facade, I am a selfish mess!

I so need Jesus!  Maybe you do too.
  

The Person I See in the Mirror

Love this poem!

The Looking
In the mirror one day,
I saw a self.
Body.
Mind.
Emotion.
I took a closer look and peered into my soul.
The things I saw?
Brokenness.
Fear.
Envy.
Lust.
Insecurity.
One more time I looked into the mirror.
This time I saw a redeemed self
This time I saw a beautiful self.
This time I saw, in the background, Jesus.
By his grace he redeemed me.
Now he is making me into
the self I want to be,
the self that I really am.

Poem by Jim Martin at A Place For The God-Hungry

Three Truths About Us

The quote below is from Jared Wilson at The Gospel-Driven Church: 3 Things I Know About Myself and Others. The three things he says he knows about himself are also true about me.

1. Hurt people hurt people.

2. If Satan can't get me to be despondent through recall of my past sins, he will try to get me bitter and graceless by reminding me of others' sins against me. I may not always agree with his condemnation of myself, but he knows it's really easy to get me to say "Yeah!" to condemnation of others.

3. The key not just to appreciation of what I've got but to thankfulness in all things is recognizing I don't deserve anything good.

Bet they are true about you too!