Much like the rest of you I'm sure, I get in the way of my faith in Christ more than anything or anyone else. Most of us tend to think about ourselves before we think about others and before we think about Christ. The things in our lives that hold us back from fully and whole heartedly following Christ are usually situations that we have put into life and not something that Jesus has thrown in there.
My biggest hold up is the "head trash" (as John Dinwiddie used to always talk about in Sunday school) that I am not worthy to even look at my Bible and too disgusting to even think about speaking to Jesus.
This type of thinking is the complete opposite of what Jesus Christ tells us through His Word. We read that Jesus came for the broken people, the sinners, the meek, the poor; the ones who were too down and out and too caught up in sin to believe that they were worthy of even the table scraps of the "religious" people of their day, let alone the one and only Son of God.
This is the same way of thinking that a lot of us, myself included, get caught up in. We believe that we aren't worthy, or not good enough, to go to church, to read the Bible, to speak to Jesus. So we avoid Him at all costs, hoping that He doesn't see the mess that we have created for ourselves. This is when Satan steps in and uses that little voice in our head to whisper in our ear, "You aren't worthy, Jesus could never love you." But He does!
Jesus does love us!! ESPECIALLY at that very moment, when we are caught up overwhelmingly in sin, believing that he can't possibly love us or have any use for us. Jesus takes us by the hand and rips us out of that life.
What we need to realize is that it is not about us. It is about Jesus. We need to stop thinking about ourselves, get our egos out of our way, and turn to Christ. I am my own biggest obstacle to a life lived for Jesus Christ, and I am willing to bet that you are your own biggest obstacle as well.
"You see, just at the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. While we were STILL sinners, Christ died for US." ---Romans 5:6,8---
"Jesus is not repelled by us, no matter how messy we are, regardless of how incomplete we are. When we recognize that Jesus is not discouraged by our humanity, is not turned off by our messiness, and simply doggedly pursues us in the face of it all, what else can we do but give in to his outrageous, indiscriminate love?" ---Mike Yaconelli - Messy Spirituality---
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