The Glory of God

Please bear with my ramblings.

I'm speeding through the last chapters of Matthew before the end of this year because Brent and I would like to start together studying Mark in the new year. Just today I was reading Matthew 20:1-16, the parable Jesus gives about the master who gave the same day's wage to those laborers he hired in the last hours of the work day as he gave to those he hired at the start of the day. The laborers who started in the early morning grumbled, saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.' But the master replied, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius [the currency of the day, I guess]? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?' Then Jesus makes the comparison to the kingdom of heaven: 'So the last will be first, and the first last.'

I read that and quickly prayed, 'Lord, let me never scorn the blessings You give to those who put their faith in You at the last second.' If I, someone who has known the Lord as long as I can remember, am going to enjoy the benefits of God's grace and mercy to the same capacity as the thief on the cross who put his faith in Christ only in the hours before he died, all glory be to God for His overflowing generosity and forgiveness! As MacArthur puts it in his study Bible, 'The thief on the cross will enjoy the full blessings of heaven alongside those who have labored their whole lives for Christ. Such is the grace of God.' Such IS the grace of God, and praise Him for it!

When I read MacArthur's statement, I was struck by how different my evaluation of my life is to the description of having labored my whole life for Christ. I look back on all the years I've been a believer, around twenty, and rather than seeing a tale of labors of love for Christ, I'm struck by the grace and mercy He continuously pours into my life, sometimes to the point where I feel it's too much and I'm ashamed to accept any more. I would LOVE to say that I've labored all my years for Christ, but I think a more accurate description would be that I've had too many failings and shortcomings to count, and the story of my life is one of a child who daily drinks in God's transforming grace, because without it I would be nothing. I must say, I consider myself more undeserving of heaven's eternal blessings than those who come to know the Lord in their last moments, because I've had all this time to live for Christ, and daily I feel that my deep and heavy debt to Him is growing exponentially. And it is, but the most rejuvenating and motivating fact is that the debt that is continuously expanding has ALREADY been covered, no matter how large it grows, by Christ's blood!

Meditating on these things makes me so excited for heaven...to SEE God, to know at the same time His infinite majesty, holiness and splendor, AND the magnitude of His grace, mercy and compassion. I'm so excited to know the reality of HIM, I'm so excited to experience reality to its fullest extent. Just now I'm sitting on my bed and looking around my room, realizing how easy it's been lately to get caught up in the 'reality' of the world. My bedroom is looking less and less like a bedroom and more and more like a bridal warehouse. Rolls of tool, dainty white napkins, cute silver kissy bells, flower girl basket, Martinelli's, champagne cups, bubbles that come in bottles that resemble champagne flutes, all cute and exciting and make me think of the wonderful DAY that's coming in three weeks and two days. But preparing a WEDDING makes it so easy to slip and forget that the world's realities of wedding days and favors and decorations are NOT anything close to lasting reality.

Preparing a MARRIAGE so far has been a ginormous reminder of heaven's true realities. I have to admit, I didn't know what I was getting into when I signed up for a relationship. It truly IS a sanctifying process. And at first, it isn't sanctifying in that it makes you a more holy person. At first, it makes you a real ugly person...at least, it reveals the ugliness already trapped inside of you. In the ten months I've been in a relationship with Brent, I've seen sides of myself and sin in myself that I didn't know existed, and as God, through the relationship, has been unpacking the box of my heart, I've been troubled by what's been stored there for so long. But thankfully the story never stops with the unpacking...You know, I've come to realize that the dealing with of the sin you recognize in yourself outside of a relationship is much easier to ignore than that of the sin you see in yourself in a relationship. In a relationship, sin has to be dealt with, gotten rid of, your heart has to be transformed if you're expecting to move forward in love with the person you're in the relationship with. Together Brent and I are finding that it's not just a little molding that needs to take place if we're expecting to marry each other, it's total transformation, change from the core. And though it's disgustingly hard in the moment, especially (for me, anyway) when it comes to giving up silly preferences that before the relationship I never knew I had such STRONG opinions about, when we see the results of the transformation God is bringing about in our hearts, I realize this relationship is one of the most fun, encouraging and heaven-preparing things I've ever gone through.

I pray God would ever increasingly be brought glory by me and my marriage to Brent.