So long, February!

To be completely honest, I am so happy to see February go. It was a long (short) month of disappoint, hurt, failures, exhaustion, sickness, and a whole lot of ugly. I failed to set goals for February, I let selfishness reign, and I let a lot of little things get to me. Don’t get me wrong, there were lots of blessings too, and I am ever so grateful, but I feel the need this week to stop and acknowledge the ugly.

God has been teaching me a lot the last few weeks about sin and holiness. Perhaps that is part of the reason that my sin is looming so large in front of me now (or perhaps it was, in reality, just a really rough month.) I have been reading the book, The Hole in our Holiness by Kevin DeYoung, and I highly recommend it. It has been challenging and encouraging in a way that you wouldn’t expect a book on holiness to be. I will hopefully write a review on it soon, so I won’t go in to detail here.

Add on to these already swirling thoughts studying through James and seeing the need for the fruit of my life to align with my faith. Throw in some world events that make me feel very small, realizing that faith is a big deal, a deal worth dying for, and wondering why I can’t seem to deal with a night of sleeplessness while brothers around the world are giving their lives for the glory of Christ.

It was a rough month, February 2015, but I am ever-so-grateful that God is gracious, good, kind. That He loves, and that He has renewed me, He has made me alive, and it is my prerogative and joy to live alive, in this new life. I am also ever-so-grateful that it’s March. That means a new beginning, the promise of a coming spring, coming sunshine, new life.

Some final, encouraging, in a keep working on it kind of way, thoughts for you:

The pursuit of holiness is not a quixotic effort to do just what Jesus did. It’s the fight to live out the life that has already been made alive in Christ. -Kevin DeYoung

Grief over sin is grace to the sinner. -Pastor Brad Wheeler