And lest anyone think...

that I typed the previous post in some deeply submitted, quietly obedient, sweetly reflective moment, let me admit that I POUNDED the hoo-ha out of the keyboard in my frustration for about half of the thing and submitted out of exhaustion for the rest of it.

I am not always as cooperative as I want to be. But I want to be cooperative. Does that count?

I guess Romans 7 is the answer about that :) Good to know I am not the first keyboard pounder. I can't help but think Paul was pounding the papyrus when he wrote it.

I love how The Message puts it:

^17-20But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

^21-23It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

²⁴I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?

²⁵The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

Know what's even better though? I REALLY love that Paul continues in Romans 8 with this almost-too-rich-to-bear news of grace:

^1-2With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

^3-4God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

Just makes ya take a deep breath, don't it? The truth of my identity, who I am and what I can do as Jesus Christ IN Kathie Slusser is there...His Spirit is IN me, able as I am not. That's truth.

Man, I love it.

And in all my wrestling and struggling with the tasks before me in ministry, my "fish in a cornfield" feeling as one teammate puts it, I am so grateful for what Becky put in the comments of the previous post; it deserves to be out here, just like I put it on paper in 48 point font to hang in front of my nose in my office cubicle:

"There's safety in complacency but God is calling us out of our comfort zone into a life of complete surrender to the cross. To live dangerously is not to live recklessly but righteously and it is because of God's radical grace for us that we can risk living a life of radical obedience for Him."

From Steve Camp song "Living Dangerously In the Hands of God" 1988

Someday I will be cooperative AND pretty doing it. It may not be until Heaven, I guess, but I like to think it can happen here. I look forward to that :)