I have about fifteen minutes to hammer out something for the three people who read this thing.

So, it only makes sense to address my last post. I was absolutely weighed down with the burden of my failures. I won’t try to soften that. I also won’t lie and pretend that I haven’t failed massively over and over again. I can see how in many cases there were mitigating factors. I am aware that I do not live in a vacuum and therefore my failures are rarely solely mine. This doesn’t make my failures any less failures.

But I am not weighed down by them at this point; I want to say “I am not weighed down my them anymore,” but this projects a confidence in Future Foundmercy that I don’t possess. I may likely pick up my burdens again this very afternoon, though I pray I don’t. What I know for sure is that I did cast my cares on the only One who can shoulder them. I repented of the foolishness of believing that any of my responsibilities are mine alone to carry.

The thing is, I can simultaneously be aware that I am “making too much of myself” and unaware of how, or how much. God is kinder than me. I tend to believe I should lie in the bed I have made. I believe that if I face suffering or pain, that I ought to endure it on the basis that i deserve it. I mean, I deserve hell, don’t I? JC Ryle says I do. (Check out some quotes from him here: https://www.gracegems.org/30/short_pithy_gems_from_jc_ryle.htm) I don’t ask God for help because I think I should deserve help before I ask. How completely full of myself that is!

Three more minutes. What shall I leave you, dear reader, with? With what shall I leave you? Correct grammar! Ha!

If you think you need to deserve grace to get it, that is not grace.

The gospel says that we are all wretched sinners that God loved so much that He sent His Son to make a way to redeem us. There’s no earning that. And He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?