Perfecting

Every Monday we’ll post something to do with maintaining sexual purity. Hope it helps.

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Perfecting

“The Lord will perfect that which concerns me.” (Psalms138:8)

I’ve every reason to give up on myself today. It’s only been a few hours since I woke, and in record time I’ve managed to snap at my wife, curse the list of To Do’s, whine about money, covet every fifty-something man who isn’t me and brush morning devotions aside because, after all, there’s too much else to do and God doesn’t seem to be taking my calls anyway. It’s a bad hair day. Thanks for that smirk, I know I’m practically bald. But the few hairs I have are bad, along with everything else, so I’m glad we’re talking via blog post. You wouldn’t want me any other way.

And yet — it matters. Despite my rotten attitude I do care, the attitude being temporary and the caring a constant. So within minutes I’ll be leaving the computer to apologize to Renee, tease Jeremy about the Algebra he’s facing today which he loathes (the apple fell quite close to the tree) and open the Word for some reading and prayer. In short, I woke up a rebel but will be turned around, irresistibly, and harnessed into discipleship. Again. And there’s the daily mystery David talked about, which all of us belonging to Him experience. He perfects that which concerns us, shepherding us with or without our permission, having given us a nature that can’t be satisfied with sin and that does, indeed, crave holiness. (Romans 6:2) We prove it so often, so regularly, that I find it incredibly reassuring to look at His perfecting work.

It’s a work He originally desired, not me. “For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do His good pleasure”, Paul said (Philippians 2:13) Whoa, important point here: if I so much as will to do his good pleasure, that alone is evidence He’s working – present tense – in me. History proves I won’t, on my own, have the slightest desire to do, much less live in, righteousness, so I clearly didn’t come up with the plan for Joe Dallas to even want what’s right. He did. In fact, He did it in a rather “show off” way, God being quite entitled to show off, having bragging rights and all. The word “worketh” which Paul uses here is translated from the Greek energeo, meaning, among other things, “To display one’s activity; show one’s self-operation.” (Strong’s Concordance)

Beautiful. God is displaying His activity in you, showing His self- operation by giving you a desire for Him and His ways despite the pull other ways may now have in your life. The conflict between flesh and spirit is, in fact, proof of the Spirit residing in you, otherwise why the conflict? The energeo, that awesome godly energy churning inside you His Temple, doesn’t let you wander too far, for too long. You want His will despite your own, knowing there’s no lasting peace apart from it, and He shows His self-operation by overriding, time and again, your self-will. We struggle; He wins. And when He wins don’t we all?

I once took a house over that was quite a disaster, but I saw potential. The front yard in particular was thrashed, brown and crusty with no life, a wasteland. I took special pleasure in tilling, pruning, weeding, planting and nurturing it until the whole darned street saw something green where there’d once been desert. It spoke well of the gardener, not the yard, so the gardener strutted, ridiculously pleased with himself. Yup, that’s my handiwork! I’d say aloud every time I drove up, knowing it not only pleased me but drew attention to my abilities. Mine, not the yards’, which could have done nothing on its own.

But God’s no strutting fool puffing His chest out over a bit of fertilized earth. He did infinitely more by taking something alive but dead, giving it His nature and through love and the greatest sacrifice wooing it unto Himself with irresistible grace, fashioning an unwashed dog into a sheared but compliant lamb so the whole darned world can see something green where there’d once been desert, speaking well of the potter, not the clay, drawing attention to His abilities. (Yup, that’s My handiwork!)

He is perfect, and He’s perfecting us. Every day that the bit is turned in our mouths and we yield is yet another testimony to His perfecting. So with that settled, I’m up now, properly focused and ready for the day. And you? Good.

Let’s both go show the neighborhood what the gardener did.