Happy New Years

I hope you all have had a great transition from 2006 to 2007. We're not doing much of anything here. It doesn't even feel like New Years. It's just as well though. I finally managed to pick up a shift at a Starbucks here and it's from 9:15 a.m. to 2:45 tomorrow. Just in the nick of time too. If I hadn't gotten a shift within the next week I would have lost my job because I would have gone 3 weeks without working. I should be covered now though. That's a huge answer to prayer.

My parents go to an awesome church here called Lookout Mountain. It's a really big church, so it's hard to get the fellowship out of it, but they have small groups every other week, and my parents are part of a good one. The service my family goes to is on Saturday nights, so we went last night. There was a guest speaker who spoke about the gift of getting caught, specifically in reference to getting caught in our sin

It got me thinking about how many times I've been caught, how a lot of times it's the fear of getting caught that keeps me from doing things, or sometimes the only thing that has been able to draw me away from my sin has been getting caught. Of course, I hated it at the time, but it has saved me so many times. The scary thing is how good I am at not getting caught. The things that I've gotten away with far outnumber the things that I've gotten in trouble for. Even when I get caught, a lot of times I can explain it all away.

Obviously God knows everything I do. I know this, and I usually know it consciously, but I do care. I do things anyway. God knows everything and there's nothing I can do about that, but as long as people don't find out it's fine. In my sinful opinion, God hasn't done much about it, so it doesn't really matter if he knows or not. So what does that mean? It's a horrible attitude to have, but I still think that way.

How will this end up playing out? I know God is the one responsible for the times I have gotten caught, but what about all the things I've gotten away with? Will I just continue living this way until I die and come to final judgment? Will everything blow up in my face in a fantastic, lethal eruption, destroying me and everyone I love? When does it end? I can't find it within my depraved humanity a desire to stop. I find myself complacent in my sin.

Perhaps my "New Years resolution" (I hate general concept of that by the way) should be to seek God in this. I've asked a lot of questions in this post, but the real one is this: Do I have the courage and humility it takes to ask God to bestow the gift of getting caught upon me?

I will leave you with a final quote from the message last week. I missed who said it, and if anyone knows, please let me know. I even tried googling it, but I couldn't find it (I didn't spend too much time on it though). This is what stood out to me more than anything last night.

"The heart of God is an open wound of love."