The sorrow of the world is deadly because it indulges in self-justification. It fuels resentment and resistance to God. Like Cain, the self-pitying soul feels no genuine remorse for evil. He merely whines, “My punishment is greater than I can bear!”
The change we need is more radical than we can yet undergo; we must be willing to wait for our perfection in Christ. In the meantime, being a “new creation” in Christ requires that we accept, however painfully to our pride, what grace really means.
Love, obedience, and worship are powerful concepts — but we must be careful. Given our tendency to focus on some things to the exclusion of others that are equally important, we need to be warned against cutting any of these off from the others.
To those who are willing to come to Him in His Son, ready to trust Him and obey His word, God is willing to grant as much of Himself as can be granted to us right now in our frailty. But we desire more. And much more will be possible, in His time.
Even in Christ, we can’t see and know God as Adam and Eve did. But the hope of Christianity is that, through Christ, what was lost in the Fall can actually be regained. The time comes when those who have truly sought God “shall see His face.”
We should set ourselves the goal of improving our thinking about God a little bit each day. There is no question that our lives will be governed by some sort of thinking about God. The only question is what the quality of that thinking will be.
Consider the concept of “laziness” in regard to spiritual growth. Numerous texts in Proverbs speak of the general undesirability of being a sluggard (6:6-11). But sluggishness is more than a minor character flaw. It can kill us spiritually.
We do not know how to pray as we ought, even to know what to ask for. Here, then, is an opportunity for us to learn humility. We can defer to the Lord and pray for help in our praying. We can pray for Him to do whatever, in His wisdom, He sees best.
God’s goodness is indeed a treasury of wonderful riches. But it was not set up to fund the removal of every little inconvenience from our lives in this world. We need to be careful what we ask for and why. God’s grace is not to be taken lightly.
As the God of truth, God requires that our actions truthfully reflect our desire and that our desire be nothing less than conformity — body, soul, and spirit — to the realities of His truth. We must desire God as sincerely as children often do.
