How to Fear

How do I fear God? I fear so many things, but I feel so little fear for God. I want all my other fears to be smothered by an all-consuming fear of God. A shake-in-my-boots awe of the great and incomprehensible glory of God revealed to me through His Son. God teach me to fear!
Can fear be a choice? Can that really be genuine? Courage is a choice. The choice to act right regardless of fear's bondage. Can right fear work the same way? Can I choose to act out the fear of God even if I don't always feel it?
What part of righteous fear is emotional? Should I simply act out of a fear of God and trust that a more righteous, more complete, fear will follow?
Or is Godly fear emotional at all?

I'm beginning to understand that I can't make myself fear. And I shouldn't try. That's isn't the point anyways. The point is knowing and understanding God. Fear and obedience and truth and righteousness and nobility and every good thing follows by default. But if I ever take my eyes off of God and and focus on who I should be and how I should feel and how I should think, I miss the mark entirely.  

"This much seems to me clear, that, if there be no God, it may be nobler to be able to live without one; but, if there be a God, it must be nobler not to be able to live without Him. The moment, however, that nobility becomes the object in any action, that moment the nobleness of the action vanishes. The man who serves his fellow that he may himself be noble, misses the mark. He alone who follows the truth, not he who follows nobility, shall attain the noble."

True thinking, true feelings, true being, come from losing ones self in the only One who is TRUTH. Our desire to be good and true should pus us to the One who can make us forget all our falseness and transform us into His likeness. Only by knowing God can I fear. And by knowing His I can't help but have fear of Him. Because God is awesome and fear-inspiring. 

See and Savor

Taste and savor. It goes beyond mental enjoyment to something much more elementary. A basic, sensory, experiential delight in God.
What do I savor?
Christ has competed the work of salvation. By faith alone I can receive the benefits of His completed work. Christ is absolutely perfect and infinitely valuable. He has all insight and wisdom. His ways are higher than my ways, His thoughts than my thoughts. He is Lord, which means He is the ruler of my life. He jealously works in me to conform me to His image. He loves perfectly because He is Love and there can be no true love without Him. He is faithful to complete in me the good work that He has begun. He provides the deepest satisfaction that I can have.

Hypocrisy

"Is it not a strange drift, this of men," said the curate, "to hide what is, under the veil of what is not? to seek refuge in lies, as if that which is not, could be an armor of adamant? to run from the daylight for safety, deeper into the cave? In the cave house the creatures of the night--the tigers and hyenas, the serpent and the old dragon of the dark; in the light are true men and women, and the clear-eyed angels. But the reason is only too plain; it is, alas! that they are themselves of the darkness and not of the light. They do not fear their own. They are more comfortable with the beasts of darkness than with the angels of light. They dread the peering of holy eyes into their hearts; they feel themselves naked and fear to be ashamed, therefore cast the garment of hypocrisy about them. They have that in them so strange to the light that they feel it must be hidden from the eye of day, as a thing _hideous_, that is, a thing to be hidden. But the hypocrisy is worse than all it would hide. That they have to hide again, as a more hideous thing still.

"God hides nothing. His very work from the beginning is _revelation_--a casting aside of veil after veil, a showing unto men of truth after truth. On and on, from fact to fact divine He advances, until at length in His Son Jesus, He unveils His very face. Then begins a fresh unveiling, for the very work of the Father is the work the Son Himself has to do--to reveal. His life was the unveiling of Himself, and the unveiling of the Son is still going on, and is that for the sake of which the world exists. When He is unveiled, that is, when we know the Son, we shall know the Father also. The whole of creation, its growth, its history, the gathering total of human existence, is an unveiling of the Father. He is the life, the eternal life, the _Only_. I see it--ah! believe me--I see it as I can not say it. From month to month it grows upon me. The lovely home-light, the One essence of peaceful being, is God Himself.

"He loves light and not darkness, therefore shines, therefore reveals. True, there are infinite gulfs in Him, into which our small vision can not pierce, but they are gulfs of light, and the truths there are invisible only through excess of their own clarity. There is a darkness that comes of effulgence, and the most veiling of all veils is the light. That for which the eye exists is light, but _through_ light no human eye can pierce.--I find myself beyond my depth. I am ever beyond my depth, afloat in an infinite sea; but the depth of the sea knows me, for the ocean of my being is God.--What I would say is this, that the light is not blinding because God would hide, but because the truth is too glorious for our vision. The effulgence of Himself God veiled that He might unveil it--in his Son. Inter-universal spaces, aeons, eternities--what word of vastness you can find or choose--take unfathomable darkness itself, if you will, to express the infinitude of God, that original splendor existing only to the consciousness of God Himself--I say He hides it not, but is revealing it ever, forever, at all cost of labor, yea of pain to Himself. His whole creation is a sacrificing of Himself to the being and well-being of His little ones, that, being wrought out at last into partakers of His divine nature, that nature may be revealed in them to their divinest bliss. He brings hidden things out of the light of His own being into the light of ours.

"But see how different _we_ are--until we learn of Him! See the tendency of man to conceal his treasures, to claim even truth as his own by discovery, to hide it and be proud of it, gloating over that which he thinks he has in himself, instead of groaning after the infinite of God! We would be forever heaping together possessions, dragging things into the cave of our finitude, our individual self, not perceiving that the things which pass that dreariest of doors, whatever they may have been, are thenceforth but 'straws, small sticks, and dust of the floor.' When a man would have a truth in thither as if it were of private interpretation, he drags in only the bag which the truth, remaining outside, has burst and left.

"Nowhere are such children of darkness born as in the caves of hypocrisy; nowhere else can a man revel with such misshapen hybrids of religion and sin. But, as one day will be found, I believe, a strength of physical light before which even solid gold or blackest marble becomes transparent, so is there a spiritual light before which all veils of falsehood shall shrivel up and perish and cease to hide; so that, in individual character, in the facts of being, in the densest of Pharisaical hypocrisy, there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, nothing hid that shall not be known.

"If then, brother or sister, thou hast that which would be hidden, make haste and drag the thing from its covert into the presence of thy God, thy Light, thy Saviour, that, if it be in itself good, it may be cleansed; if evil, it may be stung through and through with the burning arrows of truth, and perish in glad relief. For the one bliss of an evil thing is to perish and pass; the evil thing, and that alone, is then natural food of Death--nothing else will agree with the monster. If we have such foul things, I say, within the circumference of our known selves, we must confess the charnel-fact to ourselves and to God; and if there be any one else who has a claim to know it, to that one also must we confess, casting out the vile thing that we may be clean. Let us make haste to open the doors of our lips and the windows of our humility, to let out the demon of darkness, and in the angels of light--so abjuring the evil. Be sure that concealment is utterly, absolutely hopeless. If we do not thus ourselves open our house, the day will come when a roaring blast of His wind, or the flame of His keen lightning, will destroy every defense of darkness, and set us shivering before the universe in our naked vileness; for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known. Ah! well for man that he can not hide! What vaults of uncleanness, what sinks of dreadful horrors, would not the souls of some of us grow! But for every one of them, as for the universe, comes the day of cleansing. Happy they who hasten it! who open wide the doors, take the broom in the hand, and begin to sweep! The dust may rise in clouds; the offense may be great; the sweeper may pant and choke, and weep, yea, grow faint and sick with self-disgust; but the end will be a clean house, and the light and wind of Heaven shining and blowing clear and fresh and sweet through all its chambers. Better so, than have a hurricane from God burst in doors and windows, and sweep from his temple with the besom of destruction every thing that loveth and maketh a lie. Brothers, sisters, let us be clean. The light and the air around us are God's vast purifying furnace; out into it let us cast all hypocrisy. Let us be open-hearted, and speak every man the truth to his neighbor. Amen." 

--Thomas Wingfold - Curate of Glaston, Written by George MacDonald

St. Augustine

"For he loves Thee too little who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake."

I want to love with the love of God. Completely sold out and given away to the people around me. I want to love so much that my pain at losing a friend to death is only dwarfed by my joy that they can see the face of Christ more clearly. I want to love with no reservations about being taken advantage of. I want to seek the best of every person I come in contact with. I want to love with a love that gives glory to God. I want to love God with a passion that brings all other loves along with it. I want every love to be centered on God, to point to Him, because that is in only real love.
I want my love to be filled with grace. Unmerited favor to those I love. God's grace through me making me able to give grace to imperfect people around me. I want to "love more and love less," that is, to love the people in my life by always loving God more than them. That is the only way to truly love. 

It's a Zombie World

It struck my recently how so many people are fascinated by death. The horror movies, the vampire stories, the zombie comedies. They all have a bizarre attraction to people. And then I realized a simple truth; people relate to that. Most people don't realize it but they relate to these creatures that are dead. Think about it for a minute. In most of the stories there is some kind of disease or curse that mutates people into the living dead. They move, they breath, they eat and drink, they have desires and drives, but they have no soul.
And the stark reality is that this is the natural human state. We naturally are dead. We live and walk, eat and sleep, even interact socially, but we have no life. We act on our basest desires, we feast on sin. We stumble and destroy. We try to devour that glimpse of real life.
But there is a cure. There are people who are not controlled by the disease. The vaccine has been handed out and the ones who have received it are also able to pass it on. Those who were once hostile to life now are givers of life. But the cure involves dying. The living dead must be finally killed and reborn to be alive. The soulless, shuffling zombies can become living, conquering humans. And on the outside there isn't always that much of a visible difference. But the soul is alive.
So the challenge is this: Live as though you are alive. If we have been set free from the plague of sin than we ought to live as though we are free, no longer walking in the same way of life as the dead world. Because how can we who are dead to (death) live in it any more? By grace we have been vaccinated through faith. So those who are dead to sin cannot live any longer in it.

Ephesians 2:1-5ish "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—"

Romans 6:2ish-12 How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.

Love Her More and Love Her Less - John Piper

The God whom we have loved, and in
Whom we have lived, and who has been
Our Rock these twenty-two good years
With you, now bids us, with sweet tears,
To let you go: "A man shall leave
His father and his mother, cleave
Henceforth unto his wife, and be
One unashaméd flesh and free."
This is the word of God today,
And we are happy to obey.
For God has given you a bride
Who answers every prayer we've cried
For over twenty years, our claim
For you, before we knew her name.

And now you ask that I should write
A poem - a risky thing, in light
Of what you know: that I am more
The preacher than the poet or
The artist. I am honored by
Your bravery, and I comply.
I do not grudge these sweet confines
Of rhyming pairs and metered lines.
They are old friends. They like it when
I bid them help me once again
To gather feelings into form
And keep them durable and warm.

And so we met in recent days,
And made the flood of love and praise
And counsel from a father's heart
To flow within the banks of art.
Here is a portion of the stream,
My son: a sermon poem. It's theme:
A double rule of love that shocks;
A doctrine in a paradox:

If you now aim your wife to bless,
Then love her more and love her less.

If in the coming years, by some
Strange providence of God, you come
To have the riches of this age,
And, painless, stride across the stage
Beside your wife, be sure in health
To love her, love her more than wealth.

And if your life is woven in
A hundred friendships, and you spin
A festal fabric out of all
Your sweet affections, great and small,
Be sure, no matter how it rends,
To love her, love her more than friends.

And if there comes a point when you
Are tired, and pity whispers, "Do
Yourself a favor. Come, be free;
Embrace the comforts here with me."
Know this! Your wife surpasses these:
So love her, love her, more than ease.

And when your marriage bed is pure,
And there is not the slightest lure
Of lust for any but your wife,
And all is ecstasy in life,
A secret all of this protects:
Go love her, love her, more than sex.

And if your taste becomes refined,
And you are moved by what the mind
Of man can make, and dazzled by
His craft, remember that the "why"
Of all this work is in the heart;
So love her, love her more than art.

And if your own should someday be
The craft that critics all agree
Is worthy of a great esteem,
And sales exceed your wildest dream,
Beware the dangers of a name.
And love her, love her more than fame.

And if, to your surprise, not mine,
God calls you by some strange design
To risk your life for some great cause,
Let neither fear nor love give pause,
And when you face the gate of death,
Then love her, love her more than breath.

Yes, love her, love her, more than life;
O, love the woman called your wife.
Go love her as your earthly best.

Beyond this venture not. But, lest
Your love become a fool's facade,
Be sure to love her less than God.

It is not wise or kind to call
An idol by sweet names, and fall,
As in humility, before
A likeness of your God. Adore
Above your best beloved on earth
The God alone who gives her worth.
And she will know in second place
That your great love is also grace,
And that your high affections now
Are flowing freely from a vow
Beneath these promises, first made
To you by God. Nor will they fade
For being rooted by the stream
Of Heaven's Joy, which you esteem
And cherish more than breath and life,
That you may give it to your wife.

The greatest gift you give your wife
Is loving God above her life.
And thus I bid you now to bless:
Go love her more by loving less.


http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/poems/love-her-more-and-love-her-less

God is the Gospel - Lesson 6

Defining the Gospel

Event - Death and Resurrection

Achievement - Atonement/Payment

Offer - Salvation by Faith

Application - Living in Light of the Gospel

1 Cor 15:1-4 

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,

When Christ died the wrath of God was absorbed by Him. 

Gal 3:13  Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree"—

Christ paid the debt for our sins.

1Pe 2:24  He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 

Christ's life of perfection opened the door for us to own His righteousness.

Rom 5:19  For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. 

Christ purchased eternal life for us.

Rom 5:20  Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 

Rom 5:21  so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through (Christs) righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

God is the Gospel - Lesson 5

"For God so loved the world..." 

What is is about this statement that is remarkable? Is it because it shows the inherent value of the world? We are so great that even God loves us? No! rather it is a statement about the remarkable nature of God, that He loves us even though we are inherently unlovely.

God derives joy from us finding our joy in Him. God delights in us delighting in Him. I should find my joy in every gift because I find my joy in God. God likes to see me deriving pleasure from His gifts. And even seeking pleasure in His gifts but never to the point where the gifts are the focus. 

I can glorify God by being. If the heavens can declare God's glory by simply being, how much more can I declare Gods glory by just being. The heavens are beautiful even though they are lifeless. I am created in the image of God, full of life, with a will, emotions, passions, actions, thoughts, and desires. 

God is the Gospel - Week 3

Philippians 1:19-21

For I know that through your prayers and the help of the 

Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, 

as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all 

ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will 

be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. 

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Being ashamed and being courageous are put at odds in this passage. The reason we can be courageous is that living means more of Christ, He is glorified and His nature is exemplified, and dying means more of Christ, we see Him face to face. Whether we live or die we have great gain. So I am not ashamed, not because I am being honored, but because Christ is being honored. 

22-23

If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. 

Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 

I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is 

to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.

Philippians 3:7-8

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of 

Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing 

worth of knowing Christ Jesus my lord. For his sake I have

suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, 

in order that I may gain Christ.

What is Love? 

Commonly to be loved is to be made much of. To me made to feel good about yourself. A person feels loved when they are made to feel significant. 

Biblical love means: God loves us by doing everything he need to do, at great cost to himself, to remove every obstacle that keeps us from knowing Him. God's love has no place for boosting egos and making people feel falsely good about themselves. God's love is a love of absolute truth. God is the only one who can perfectly love by pointing to Himself as the end-all. 

How do love and glory relate to each other? God's love and His desire to show His glory are work perfectly together. Because the expression of God's glory is best for us, God's perfect love is perfectly fulfilled by showing us His glory. Jesus purposefully let Lazarus die because he loved Mary and Martha. He knew that it would be better for them to see him raised than to see him healed. 

Love is when God gets you to God. 

Something Inspirational

Just kidding. I don't really have anything to say. So this is the part where I proceed to say nothing.
I'm not really sure about a lot of things right now. Definitely no profound statements or confident claims coming from this direction.
I've been working at Summers Auto Sales for about 2 1/2 months now. Apparently they like me. I looked for an EMT job today. No success on that front. Part of me wonders if I really want to work in EMS. Another part of me knows I do. At least for a while. I've wondered if saving peoples lives will give me some great sense of accomplishment or purpose. I don't think it really will. Real satisfaction doesn't seem to come from what I do. I know this.
Change is coming. Maybe not quickly. Maybe it will be slow and hardly noticeable. Maybe it will happen overnight. I want to see it coming and prepare. But I don't know what will change, or how.
I want to do something. Something bold. Something that says 'I refuse to live in monotony.' But the only things I can think to do are the same things I do every day. Every week. And I guess that's not bad. How does the saying go, 'The way you spend your minutes is the way you spend your life'?
I want to invest in people. And I do. Sometimes. I want to be better at this.  I don't want to be too lazy or too scared to love the people around me.
I want to live more conscious of the constant presence of God. He said, 'Abide in Me.' I want to stay there. Not just hang out on weekends.
I think I need a hobby. And probably another paycheck. Why do those always have to go together?

God is the Gospel - Week 2 Day 1-4

Spiritual Gifts
According to 1 Cor. 12:4-12 why does God supply manifestations of the Spirit?
For building up the church and encouraging individuals.
What is the 'more excellent way' talked about in vs. 31?
More important than spiritual gifts is love. Without love spiritual gifts are worse than useless.
Signs and Wonders
God often authenticates His works by signs and wonders, however false signs and wonders are shown all the time to try to lead people away from God. How do we differentiate between true and false signs and wonders?
The true work of God will always line up with His revealed nature. God never contradicts Himself. True signs and wonders always give glory to God. False signs and wonders lift up the individual as great.

God is the Gospel - Day 3-4

Day 3
Isaiah 64:4
From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.

2 Chronicles 16:9
For the eyes of the lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.

Acts 17:24-25
The God who made the world and everything in it, being lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

Mark 10:45
For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

What is the truth that runs through all these passages? God is the giver of life and the supporter of those who wait blamelessly for Him. God works for us. He doesn't wait for us to work for Him.
What is the danger of twisting this truth? We begin to lose responsibility for our actions. We blame God for our failures and expect Him to spoon-feed us all our successes.


Day 4
Do we only desire God?

Psalm 73:25-26
Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.  My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Is there any place for a desiring anything other than God? God gives His children good gifts. If we take those gifts and look to them as the giver of please they become idols, but if we accept them as gifts from God, give Him glory and thanks, and enjoy them as the expression of God heart, then they are truly good. Taking pleasure in a gift is not wrong. Looking to the gift as the source of pleasure, rather than the giver of the gift, is wrong.
Augustine - “He loves Thee too little who loves anything together with
Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.”

1 Timothy 4:4-5

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,  for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

God is the Gospel - Day 1

http://dwynrhh6bluza.cloudfront.net/resources/documents/1738/sggg.pdf?1282936541
What's so great about heaven?
Q1: What will heaven be like? Why will it be enjoyable? How does my perception of heaven differ from popular opinion?
Honestly, I haven't really thought about heaven much. If I know anything of God's nature it will be not only better than anything I can imagine, but completely different than anything I can comprehend right now.
Why will I enjoy it? Because the best, highest Good will be there. And I'll see Him face to face and be like Him. That is what I was designed for. That is the greatest satisfaction and enjoyment I could ever experience.
How does my view differ from what's commonly understood about heaven? It seems that most people think of heaven as an escape from hardship. They get to leave everything unpleasant behind and live in a gold-filled, cloud city spa. In a huge mansion. Probably with a harp and angel wings. But regardless of whether or not there are gates made of pearl, it's going to be luxurious and nobody will ever be sad or have to do anything they don't want to. Oh yeah, I think God might be there too...
So could I be satisfied in heaven without God? I'll up the stakes. I think a better question is: If God were in hell (eternal torment) and sin and Satan were in heaven (eternal luxury) where would I rather be? The answer is, I would rather be where my treasure is. The only reason my heart desires heaven is because everything I treasure is hidden in my Father. I don't care where He is, I want to be with Him.
Q2: Why do I believe in Jesus?
The same reason I choose to believe in anything else. Because it's true. Because it's real. I cannot believe in something or someone simply because I believe the belief will be good for me. I cannot believe a lie that I think will help me. God help me, I believe in Him because I believe He is TRUE, not because I think I'll be blessed with a nice life and a get-out-of-hell-free card.

Open Hands

There are things God gives us that we can grasp tightly. In fact I believe that every promise is meant to be taken for fact and held with a vice grip. The more we are challenged, the tighter our grasp should be. Conflict should make us close our fists on the promises of God and hold on for dear life.
There are other things God gives to us that are meant to be help with open hands. Usually these things are specific blessings or hopes. When we lift our hands to God he pours His torrential deluge of blessing out on us. We hold our hands up and they are filled.
The problem comes when we claim these blessings as our rights. We try to catch the flood of  gifts but, like water, as we grasp for them we find our hands are empty.
God delights in giving His children good gifts but when we claim the gift as our own by our own right, and not as a gift of God (which by definition is something we don't deserve), it usually is not long before He shows us that He can indeed give and take away. And not only that, but many of the gifts we are given, by their very nature slip through our fingers the tighter we try to hold on to them.
The gifts of God have some very unique qualities. Specifically they are unique in their ownership. By that I mean this: When God gives us is gift it is completely ours, not because we earned it, but simply because God says that it is ours. However many of these gifts, or specifically the blessings, are only ours so long as we accept them as gifts and we don't believe they are our rights. In point of fact, we deserve none of the gifts that are so freely giving to us. The things we do deserve look much different than the things we receive.
As an example think of a friendship or any relationship. When we accept it as a gift of God and hold it with an open hand it goes smoothly, just because of the laws on human nature God has established. When we begin to close our fist on a relationship we find the other person slipping away. That rule seems to apply pretty universally. The more controlling we try to be, the less control or influence we have.
Another example is grace. By definition grace is God unmerited favor toward humans. We don't deserve it. And when we recognize that and live in the light of the gift we have been given we live in grace. However when we forget that grace is only ours because it was given to us we lose the ability to live in that grace which is critical for victorious living.
This is a special showcase of the perfect love of God. If we could earn blessings we would become self righteous. And when we lose control we have more freedom than when we try to control everything. God's perfect design requires dependence on Him, in the same way that a child is dependent on its father. More accurately, a child's dependence on it's father is a picture of every humans dependence on God.
So I'm trying to live with open hands.