Leadership Tips & Training And Can It Be.

I woke up this morning with a song in my heart and the words playing over and over in my brain.   Has that ever happened to you?  You hear a song and it makes its way into your subconscious.  This one is an old hymn written by Charles Wesley not long after his conversion.  I can relate to him.  He spent the first part of his life really trying to get it right.  Striving can be exhausting.  Charles Wesley was born just before Christmas in 1707.  He grew up in London and during his second year at Oxford, he grew serious about spiritual things.   Still, he nor his brother John had yet to receive Christ as Savior; however, they were bent on trying to live the Christian life so perfectly and methodically that they were called Methodists [1] by their fellow students.

Trying Hard To Get It Right

Charles really tried hard to get it right, but he kept failing.  As young men, he and John volunteered to go to the American colony of Georgia to be missionaries.  Again, utter failure.  Charles was demanding and autocratic in nature and insisted on baptizing babies, and not by sprinkling them, but immersing them three times in succession!  One angry woman even fired a gun at him.  Charles and John went back home to England, tired and discouraged and in a spiritual crisis.  All of their “striving” had not brought them the connection with God they had tried so hard to attain. Finally, after hearing the teachings of a Moravian Christian named Peter Boehler, they finally got it.  On Sunday, May 21, 1738, Charles wrote, “I now found myself at peace with God, and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ.  I saw that by faith I stood.” 

For it is by grace…

Such was the case for me as a young girl, trying so hard to do things right.  Trying so hard to please my parents, trying so hard to make good grades, trying so hard to be accepted and loved by God and everyone else, but to no avail.  It does not work that way.  A whole lifetime of trying to “do” the right things will not bring you into a right relationship with God.  If that were true, then we would all be bragging about what a good job we are doing. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.  Ephesians 2:8.  NIV   

Occasionally, I find myself going back to that old way of thinking.  I picture it as going back to putting on the chains that held me fast for so many years.  I wake up some mornings and think, “Today, I am going to get it exactly right  ... today is going to be a perfect day.  I will start off with my quiet time, go and exercise, choose only quality foods in small portions and write down every single bite of it.  I will be kind and generous to all that come in my path … blah, blah, blah.” Then I mess up, usually as soon as my feet hit the floor!  I do not want to go back to a life of slavery – being enslaved to seeking approval.  I don’t have to do that with Jesus.  He could not love me more than he does right now.   I have come to realize that life is a journey and we can either march our way through or we can dance in the light of His Love!  I choose this day to dance... because He loves me and gave Himself for me.  I rejoice with the hymn writer, Charles Wesley, who penned the words to my new favorite hymn that is wonderfully stuck in my brain:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,

Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;

Thine eye diffused a quickening ray –

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

Amazing Love – How can it be!  Not going back …