“The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.” - Morton Kelsey
Hello! This week’s devotional is kind of a response to what we did last night at chapter retreat. For those of you that weren’t there for the end, what happened was Becca asked us all a series of questions and, to respond, we went and stood under the sign on the wall that best answered it. For example she asked things like “In what area are you most proud of” and “In what area do you feel least confident in” and for each of these we could stand under spirituality, physical, emotional, social, intellectual, or occupational. Then after all the questions were asked, we all sat down and got a chance to tell everyone why we answered in the ways we did.
I was moved and encouraged by all of your stories and reactions. I know this is so cheesy, but seeing how no one was ever by themselves under a sign showed that being a Kappa Delta really does mean that you will never have to struggle with something alone because you will always be surrounded by people who can relate to what you’re going through.
The one thing that really caught my attention though was that most people chose “spiritual” for the answer to “This is an area I want to improve in. I feel like I’m not doing my best and have room for improvement.” First of all, I think it’s great that a lot of us want to strengthen our faith and, as we heard last night, there are lots of girls here to support us in that choice. I think it’s so important to make changes to improve our relationship with God, but we need to make sure we‘re changing in response to His love for us.
1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.”
So many times we try to live so that God will love us, rather than living because He already loves us. We get caught up in the idea that we have to do things in order to be loved by Him. This is such a bad trap to fall in to because if we equate God’s love with going to church every Sunday or never drinking, then what does that mean if we miss one Sunday morning? Or, heaven forbid, if we miss a Sunday because we’re super hung-over from the night before? I got the feeling last night that some of you were discouraged, like you felt you had such a long way to go in your walk with Christ so why even bother starting. Please don’t feel like that! The gospel of grace is filled with stories of how you don’t have to clean yourself up at all before you come to Jesus. I mean look at Mary Magdalene, the prostitute, and Paul, who used to actually kill Christians; They are perfect examples of how Christ wants you to come to Him first so He can help you change, rather than you trying to change first on your own.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8
Your acceptance by Christ isn’t determined by what you do or don’t do, it’s simply a wonderful gift. Ephesians 2:8-9 reminds us that “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast.” I’m not trying to undermine the importance of changing your lifestyle once you accept Christ. Changes in how we think, act and react, budget our time, spend our money, treat other people, etc should be happening daily in our lives once we’re saved. We will never finish growing and learning to become more Christ-like so obviously constant change is pretty much a given when you become a Christian. I’m just trying to highlight how we should change our lives because He loves us now, not because we’re hoping He will in the future. I think Brennan Manning explains this a little better in his book The Ragamuffin Gospel when he says “The saved sinner knows repentance is not what we do in order to earn forgiveness; it is what we do because we have been forgiven. It serves as an expression of gratitude rather than an effort to earn forgiveness.”
Last night really was inspiring to me and made me realize what great sisters I have to lean on if I need to! I hope y’all have a great week and enjoy your Valentine’s day tomorrow (I know I‘ll be spending my night at the theater with my main man J.Biebs) <3
Currently Listening To: The Remedy by David Crowder Band
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