Wednesday, October 7, 2009
A Good Day...
As I was wrapping up my night I thought to myself, 'I've had a pretty darn good day' (maybe not my verbatim thought, but a decent approximation). Then I took some time to analyze that thought, which is almost never a good idea. What lead me to the conclusion that today was a good day? What is my definition of a good day? I took stock of today's events- a trip to monergism.com's warehouse, a little time spent reading for class, watching the Caps/Flyers game, making some chicken curry with my roomie, and watching today's World Series of Poker episode. It occured to me that the majority of the day was spent entertaining myself. Apparently my working definition of a good day is a day of fun. I don't think I'm the only one who thinks this way. Take a brief survey of your friends' facebook updates. What you'll probably find is that their level of contentment is almost solely determined by whether they had fun or were upset. Rarely are we basing our joy on the only unfailing good, God Himself. Most of the time we are seeking joy in temporal, fleeting pleasures, and when these fail us we're not happy with the state of things. We look to God and wonder where He is, presuming He exists to make us happy as we have defined it. Thinking about all this lead me to the question 'how should a 'good' day be defined?' What truly makes a 'good' day?
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This reminds me of a question that someone asked at a men's retreat: When I sin, how can we know that God still loves me? What I hope is the obvious answer is looking to the cross that Christ would lay down his life for. "There is not great love than this that one should lay his life down for his friends" (Jesus). However, I feel like (from personal experience) the question stated at the time could have been from a wrong desire or maybe somewhat misplaced. It seemed as if the question was asked out of the desire to "feel good," a desire that, if it exists alone, results from a potentially innacurate theology. The gospel accomplished something. Christ's work accomplished and is accomplishing a determined goal--a people zealous for good works to the praise of the glory of the grace of God. So when we ask to know that God loves us, what are we looking for: a good feeling that keeps us from being sad (revealing that our definition of good is our own fulfillment or "happiness") OR the desire to know that God has forgiven our sin and given us life, confidently enabling us to move forward in our calling (if we know we are forgiven, we know we still have hope to become more like Jesus in spite of our sin i.e., God has not given up on us)? Believe it or not; that was not a run-on sentence, but you may have to read it again. If we ask for a feeling, should we expect God to give it to us if he knows (and we know) we have little concern for repentance, but instead just want to be happy?..especially when the lack of peace we have from the sin can quicken us to search our hearts to move toward obedience and holiness? We MIGHT need to be less concerned with the feeling but more concerned with the encouragement that by his grace in Christ we will not be condemned and we can defeat the sin that so often seems to subject us back to slavery. Then we can joyfully, confidently press forward to our call to become more like Christ and bring glory to God. Eph 2 states the work that God has done in our hearts, to change us into people that obey him from the heart (not people that just sin willfully and feel good). Do you think that our motives for reminding ourselves of his grace and love be consistent with his purpose for us?..and (to finally make this relevant) our definition of a good day also be consistent with his purpose?
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