Simple Thought From a Simple Mind

Yesterday our pastor was preaching on the fact that the Christian life was never intended to be a call to exert enough will-power to live a righteous life.  (No, I wasn’t calling him a simple mind.  I was referring to my own…the thought is coming.)

As I thought about it, the idea of a believer struggling to “gut out” enough self-righteousness to please God makes just as much sense as a light bulb, disconnected from any source of electricity attempting to “will” itself to illuminate.  Just as the filament in a light bulb requires electricity to illuminate, so the believer requires the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to live the Christian life as it was meant to be lived.  (I’m sure I’m not the first to draw this analogy.)  Even our good deeds, accomplished outside of reliance on the Holy Spirit, are empty and misled.

Lord, teach me to rely on You and to stop trying to impress you with my own pitiful efforts at righteousness.  Once again, thank you for grace!

This entry was posted on 23 June 2008 at 10:29 pm and is filed under Social Injustice, Naturalism, Social Justice, Religious fanaticism, Religion, Humanism, Politics, Missionaries, Christmas, Missions, Trinitarianism, Trinity, Morality, Morals, Contemporary Christianity, Sex, Relativism, Marriage, Sanctity of Life, Biblical Worldview, Postmodernism, False Doctrine, Spirituality, Postmodernity, Postmodern Philosophy, Secularism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.