Nothing good from me

Have you ever realized how hard your heart can be to something God really wants you to understand? Its hard for me to realize that i cannot do anything good. I don't like thinking that. I don't like that i can't take credit for the good things I do. I don't like that in all my honesty, in all my good deeds, in all my visually selfless acts, that i cannot take credit for it. The reason I can't is because if i do something good, more often then not it is because my heart has the wrong motive. I want people to see me and think that i am a good person. I want people to love that i "love" others so much. I want people to think i am the best person they have ever met. I want to look good. But the truth is I am not good. My heart is self serving. My acts are not pure. My good deeds are tainted by my own desire to be loved, not to give love.



I know this is true, because when I show love and do good deeds, i get frustrated when i don't recieve back. I get frustrated, that people don't give to me all that i give to others. My love is not pure, it is twisted and tainted because i am self serving.



The truth is that i want love. I want to know love and be loved, and i want to give love unselfishly. The problem is, I don't accept love from the one who i need to accept the love from. Jesus. I need to accept your love. I need to accept your grace. I need to care what you think. If i truely understood God's love for me. If i really understood the extent to his grace and his love, my life and my heart would not be what they are. If i really believed in what i say i believe in and accepted it I would be so much more radical in my faith. I would be so much more pure in my deeds, because i would love to the extent to which i know i have been loved. I would feel so secure in the love that i have in Christ.

1 John (the epistle, not the Gospel), says so frequently that if we know God we won't sin. If you don't believe me read it. It is kind of scary for me to read that, becuase it shows me so frequently that i do not actually love God....well at least not how he loves me. My friend was talking to me and he told me that marrage is like yellow and orange starbursts. I hope i come to love someone like that in my life, even more i hope i come to love God like that and have that kind of relationship with him where he knows i will take the yellow and orange starbursts in order to give him the Glory, because he has done that for me. If they made a purple starburst (grape...yuck!) that wouldn't even be comparable to God's love.

So some of you might be thinking to yourselves what is all this starburst talk. I'm not going to explain. It just makes sense to me and small group of others, but if you contemplate hard enough you might get it.

I was in a small group last week and we were talking about relationship. I think so many of us Christians, myself included look at a passage like First John and think to ourselves "crap if i still sin im going to hell! because it means i'm not really a christian. It means i don't really beleive, have faith in or love God the way first john talks about." That's what scared me so much about that book, but then last week i realized something. That book is about our relationship with God. Its not about in or our, its about closeness. Its about our hearts belief and acceptance of Gods love. I am not married. but this is something i have seen in marrages that i have seen. If a wife truely loves her husband, and shows that love time after time, continually proving that love, and then asks the husband to sacrifice for her, garuntee the husband who knows his wife and deeply loves her back would be more then willing to do make that sacrifice, he might even go further and decided to take the yellow and orange starbursts so his wife can have the red and pink ones. (get it now?)

So this is my struggle. I need to learn to accept God's love. I need to open my heart to him, to truely know and accept his grace. Because if i do that, my movites will change. I won't do things to look good anymore, i won't be waiting to feel and accept love from others. I will be filled, and start loving others the way he calls me to, because i will know, truely know what he has done for me.