Friday, December 2, 2011

The Disk Cleanup Utility: Grace

A new month prompts a morning routine. Sitting down at my computer, I examine the icons on the desktop, move some into categorical files and others to the trash. With the desktop nearly bare, I access the system tools. Run file cleanup, registry cleanup, defragment. I restart my computer and write a new restore point, record it on my calendar, just in case.

A new month prompts the intentional cleanup of things unwanted.


"The Disk Cleanup utility is cleaning up
unnecessary files on your machine."


I could benefit from a cleanup utility that gracefully removes unnecessary files from the desktop of my spiritual life.

Becoming the woman my Creator intended is about examining the woman in the mirror, honestly revisiting my past, asking for forgiveness, then accepting God's grace.

So very often, I take the first three steps, then skip essential fourth one. I hold onto satan's whispers of diminished worthiness and impaired morality, punishing myself, refusing to let God make me whole...

This is not what God intended.
Integrity

Mistakes and unhealthy choices, cruel words, apathy and disbelief, regret. Though I seek God's forgiveness, I get bogged down in my own arrogance, insisting that files of past mistakes be saved, and saved, and saved, until my spiritual desktop is clogged with chaos, the inner computer of my heart too fragmented function.

God offers a cleanup utility:

Grace

There is one thing more I need to do:

forget what is behind me

I have not yet received all of those things.
I have not yet been made perfect.
But I move on to take hold of what Christ Jesus took hold of me for.
Brothers and sisters, I don't consider that I have taken hold of it yet.
But here is the one thing I do. I forget what is behind me.
I push hard toward what is ahead of me.
I move on toward the goal to win the prize.
God has appointed me to win it.
The heavenly prize is Christ Jesus himself.
Philippians 3:12-14 NIRV

Like the apostle Paul, God is expecting me to move forward too.

Rw
.


photo credit: cleanup icon

1 comment:

Christina Rambo said...

Why is this so hard?! It is a great weakness of mine...forgetting what is behind me. It seems especially hard to accept Grace for myself. I find it quite easy to give to others...