Grace and Legalism

When I was little, I probably "prayed the prayer" around six times. There was the time when I was 4, coming home from a disastrous Thanksgiving dinner in the back of my dad's blue Ram Charger. There was the time with Gordon Samuelson in Sunday School when I was 8. There was the time in 4th grade when I was baptized. Add in a few more hasty ones in junior high when I wondered if I was really saved, and there you go.

I worried that my first prayer, or any of the ones after that, didn't really count. That I didn't understand it fully, and so it didn't mean that Jesus's blood actually washed me clean. And now that I understood it oh so fully, if I just said the same words once again, then this time it would really count.

Let me just say that I don't understand salvation fully at all. But I know I'm saved.

Legalism is far too easy. It's human nature practically, all the way back to Adam. God doesn't know what He's doing, He's made some accidental hole that I'm going to fall through, let me just take it into my own hands and I'll figure it out. My knowledge and wisdom is here and now and will see results. While God could make me wait. Too bad if He came up with the idea of life and salvation, I don't like waiting. So I'll make myself a checklist of good and bad, wrong and right, and as long as I read my Bible and pray a prayer, that I'm good.

But doesn't that just throw Jesus out the window and defenestrate Him?

Seriously.

I'm beginning to have faith that faith is enough. That Jesus is enough. If the blood of a perfect Savior isn't enough, anyways, what more could my lousy checklists do? I know that I'm not enough, with how I mess up the second I walk away from a great revelation. With how I snap at my mom the day after we talk about respecting our parents at Girls Bible Study. With how I sing out the words "Come have your way among us" while struggling with wanting to place my own timing on high and knock God's out as far as I can.

My thoughts were all over the place during worship this morning, just more evidence of my failure, if I can't even focus on God in the fifteen minutes when the sanctuary's singing out to Him. "He's only a pew away, why can't I just sit next to him and be his friend and then that friendship will grow and we'll go to college together and be best friends and then get married or something. He's such a great guy, what would be wrong with us being together? His heart really is after You, and isn't that the type of guy You want for me? Why nottt?" I'm sure God laughs at how I resemble a 4 year old in Toys R Us, wanting the silliest things that aren't at all good for her, but still she cries and whines and whines. I just have to pray that He doesn't let in and that He can put up with my whining.

Because it is well with my soul and I know that His wisdom is better than mine and if He's telling me to just wait a minute and let things play out like He wants, just this once, than I'll listen. Even if it tears me apart a little inside, I know with all my being that this is right.

Because Christ is beautiful. And He loves me. He is enough. Enough to save me from my flesh in all respects. Holy enough to save me from the pit of perdition I'm digging myself into. Loving enough to love me beyond my misplaced hopes with a silly boy. Wise enough to know what's best for me. And powerful enough to keep me from messing it up all over again.

So I'm going to wait on Him. Let it all play out. For the glory of It All.