STALE

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith...

- Ephesians 2:8a NIV

Trusting in God is not easy.

That’s because every fiber of our being pushes against it.

We’re born into sin. Our nature is fallen. It is our body’s desire, it is our tendency, to fall into and follow sinful things.

Faith is foreign to our flesh. Like white blood cells attacking a virus that doesn’t belong in our system, our body fights it. Given the chance, we will revert to our sinful ways – every. single. time.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. When we’re saved, we are transformed.

We’re transformed, but we’re not perfect.

So what about when we feel stale?

What about when we fall into a pattern of disobedience, when we find ourselves doing things we know we shouldn’t be doing, things that we know we need to stop, but – time and time again – we do them anyway?

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. (Romans 7:14, NIV)

What about when we feel that we don’t have the energy to fight temptation? When we’re at the end of our rope? When we’ve done everything we can, and it’s still not enough?

Maybe that’s precisely what got us in this mess. Maybe it’s the trying-so-hard that made our faith stale. Maybe it’s us trying to earn our salvation that got us so wildly off-course.

Why? Because we started chasing commandments, instead of chasing Christ. We confused the goal with the purpose.

Oswald Chambers wrote, “Freshness does not come from obedience but from the Holy Spirit.”

We get so caught up in our day-to-day actions. We try so hard to live godly lives, pure lives – not just to be examples for others, but to glorify God in our actions. These are good aims. But, inevitably, we mess up. So we ask for forgiveness – as we should.

But instead of focusing on our screw-ups, maybe we should focus on our Savior.

Instead of focusing on our sin, maybe we should focus on the Living Sacrifice.

Instead of fighting to do better, maybe we should surrender everything to Christ and let Him fight for us.

Because our sin is already taken care of.

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:24-25, NIV)

When we fall in to believing that we need to do better, that we need to try harder, that we need to be as close as possible to perfect for God to love us…

That's legalism. And it’s a trap.

It’s a trap because no matter what we do, it’s never good enough. We’ll never be perfect. And when we try to be, our life becomes about chasing religion, not a relationship.

We confused the goal with the purpose. That’s when our faith becomes stale.

The sooner I accept the fact that I am not perfect (and never will be), the sooner I can fully accept the doctrine of mercy and grace. When I realize that God forever erased my imperfections and washed away my impurities, I am all the more thankful for what He did for me.

And that's refreshing.