Slow start –so what?

During every holiday I feel like I put God at a distance. I want to be as close to him as always, but it’s something about that holiday life that makes me so busy with other activities, even though I haven’t really been doing a lot of things worth mentioning. Strange, isn’t it?! It’s just hard finding time for God when my everyday routine is spoiled. (Not that I usually really have a routine. That’s student life. Ha ha.) So when the Christmas holidays were over and we had entered the new year, I thought everything would be good again. I would start school, get up in the mornings and start spending time with God. That’s not really what happened. Well, I started school and got up in the mornings, but my bible reading and prayers were still absent. Sigh... Not spending time with God makes me feel bad. I know it’s all about God’s mercy and that he doesn’t try to make me feel guilty, but lack of fellowship makes me more vulnerable.

That’s why it was so great meeting with all my church people last night to have dinner together, and hear that it’s not only me feeling that way. It was good to be reminded that I’m not supposed to “whip myself into shape”. Even though the Bible encourages to work out our salvation (Phil. 2:12) and compares the life of a disciple with being an athlete, who has to work very hard (1. Cor. 9:24-27), it isn’t God’s whip that makes us do it. It is God’s love!

Last week my house group leader, Steffen, read these verses to me:
"7 I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. 8 Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ 9 and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. 10 I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, 11 so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead! 12 I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. 13 No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us." (Phil. 3)

Ok, I had a slow start in 2007. So what? Now Im pressing forward. To reach God’s love.