Yet I live

I love cloudy November days. Today wasn't really one of them, but I do like it when it is cloudy and cold in November. I think it reminds me of those frosty mornings when I would get off the deer stand and drive home through a blizzard of leaves that would be freshly fallen off trees and being so excited about getting home to thaw out in a hot bath. However, the weather today was more like early September.

I spent a good portion of the day reading Systematic Theology and writing a paper on the cross of Christ. If I had said that two years ago, my brain would probably have shut off, but it's amazing how stimulating my work at Seminary is for my life. I think a part of me enjoys this study because it is helping me to fight the negative emotions that try to overwhelm me and try to bring the depression back into my life. When I read about God's providence and his sovereignty over everything in the world, it helps me to realize again my place in it all.

Today, I was reading about the cross of Christ in a book by John Stott. It mentioned a verse in Galatians 5:24 "Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." Following Jesus includes the daily walk of taking up our cross and following Jesus in obedience to His command. Taking up our cross means sacrificing all of our desires that do not line up with Jesus and who He is. These desires include my pride, jealousy, envy, anxiety, and so many other things that do not come from my Lord but rather from my flesh. One of the worst always seems to be that desire to myself first and glorify myself. Doing that would make me an enemy of the cross, and I don't want to be that. So it is a daily struggle of sacrificing this worldly nature beneath the cross of Christ. However, my Lord is not asking me to sacrifice things that He has given to me nor who He intended me to be. I was created with gifts and individuality, and when I glory in Him with those gifts, he is also glorified. He is not asking me to sacrifice the desires that he has given me such as the desire for family and marriage and to serve Him however He would wish. These desires are natural and do not go against His created order. But when I seek to go at it alone, when I seek to put myself first, and when I seek to order the world the way I think it should go, then my flesh has crept in again, and I have to put it back on the altar.