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Good morning!

“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”

― D.A. Carson

This quote hit me deep. I was completing a Bible Study on Discerning the Voice of God with a group of women and this quote caused me to pause and consider.

So many of these phrases stuck with me because they convict me in different ways. Many times I find myself making excuses or compromises in my relationship with God. Discipline in some areas of life comes fairly easily for me, but in many others I find that I gravitate toward the thinking that I can be passive and God will direct me and guide me…..despite the fact that I make no room to hear Him OR I hear Him and then decide maybe that wasn’t Him. 

I don’t know if you can relate to this, but I think we each have to evaluate for ourselves where we are being passive and where we are being aggressive as Priscilla Shirer pointed out. Being aggressive means “seeking His kingdom first” by making time and space to hear Him and actively obeying instead of realizing how hard it might be and so maybe that wasn’t Him directing me after all! It is amazing what the human mind can rationalize!

The good news is that we are assured that we are not doing this out of compulsion or on our own. If our hearts desire to know Him better and we are aggressively seeking Him out of passion and not obligation, then we can be inspired through His Spirit and not condemned by human failings. 

To balance this whole process seems to be a lifelong awareness journey. The Holy Spirit gives the wisdom and discernment so that we don’t become legalistic or carry the weight of all this upon ourselves. But, we also have to be honest with ourselves and whether we are being so passive that we are missing out on the richness that God has for us in this short life!

Does any phrase of that quote convict you in any area of your life? I hope so because the Lord’s conviction is a blessing and a catalyst toward the most glorious life! 

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12:11