Righteous.

Good day! (do you ever feel like we've lost some of the beauty of our language? i do...)

I've been wrestling with something over the past week or so. I think I'm ready to put words to it. Bear with me.

"Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you;

 he will never permit the righteous to be moved."

Psalm 55:22

Okay. First part of this verse...good. "Cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you..." Got it. Good. GREAT, even. The Lord will sustain me. Lots of people stop there when referencing this verse. But there's more to it.
Part 2: "...he will never permit the righteous to be moved." Hmmm. Here's where my struggle is. It's great that God won't let the righteous be moved, but...am I righteous? I mean, I'm a good person. I don't do bad things, right? But that doesn't make me righteous. And. Here's the bigger deal. I mess up. A lot. I definitely do not make the righteous choice every time. So what does that mean? Does that mean the Lord will permit me to be moved unless I start acting righteous all the time? What does "being moved" entail? Is it dangerous? Is it painful? Where am I going? Who's doing this moving? Here's the thing. It doesn't matter. I don't have to worry about what happens to those who are not righteous because, through Christ, I have been given the righteousness of God.

"For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, 

so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." 

2 Corinthians 5:21

I don't have to worry because Jesus IS righteousness. And because He lives in me, my sin is covered. When the Father looks at me, He sees Jesus. So I can rest in Him. I can cast my burden on the Lord and be sustained by Him and trust that He will not permit me to be moved. I can stand steadfast in Him. So I just have to cast my burdens.

The word "cast" means "to throw or hurl; fling". Wow. The psalmist doesn't say "set your burdens gently at the Lord's feet"...he says "cast". THROW your burdens on the Lord. He is ready. He will sustain you. Get those burdens away from you as fast as you can. Don't stand there holding on to something that hurts you, something that keeps you from doing what God has called you to do...THROW YOUR BURDENS on the Lord. Throw them. Hot potato. Get rid of em. And praise God we have the righteousness of Christ!



So let's work on getting rid of our burdens as fast as we can and not picking them back up again. (i'm guilty of that too...I'm like the Indian giver of burdens to the Lord...). I'll be praying for you, and hope you'll be praying for me too. Let's throw our burdens to the ready and waiting Savior and rest in His righteousness.

Struggle.

In this quest to become more graceful (as in "full of grace", not as in "not clumsy"--that's a whole other battle), I have become more and more aware of my words. Ann Voskamp writes about thanksgiving and how all of our sin stems from the original sin of ingratitude. Beth Moore writes about realizing that Christ crucified and raised is enough. And I copy these nuggets of wisdom down and tweet them and retweet them and add them to my notebooks and journals and try to hide them in my heart with the promises of God. I even invite others to join me in my endeavor to be more grateful and choose gratitude and joy and respond in grace through this platform and my Twitter account and my Facebook page... but when I get in a situation where I need to respond in grace, it is still not easy. Now, I'm not dense enough to think it would be easy. I'm not surprised. I just feel like the daily (hourly? minute-ly?) struggle should be acknowledged. There is no "quick fix". Honestly, I'm kind of glad it's a process. It affirms my constant need for Jesus and His grace when I have none of my own to offer.

Proverbs 15:28 says: "The heart of the righteous weighs its answers, but the mouth of the wicked gushes evil."  (NIV)

Yep. Gushes. How many times has it seemed like I could not stop my words? I could've, but it was easier for me to just let the evil gush out of my mouth. Wondering why? In the book of Matthew, Jesus is talking to the Pharisees (the religious ones...the ones who had all the answers...the smart guys...the "holy" ones...the rule followers...me?) and He says: "You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." [Matt. 12:34, ESV] I'm the same as the Pharisees. How can I expect good to flow out of my mouth when my heart is filled with judgment and anger and unforgiveness? THAT is why it's so easy for evil to gush out when the opportunity presents itself.
So. How do I fix it? The truth is... I don't. The good news is...Jesus can. And He does. If I ask Him to. Isn't He so good? Too good for me, for sure! But I am so glad it's in His character to love me in spite of my gushing evil mouth and disgusting heart. And PRAISE THE LORD that He has covered all of me--mouth and heart included--with His blood, so when the Father sees me, He sees the perfection of His Son and not my broken sinfulness. Amen? Isn't it true then? Christ. Crucified and raised IS enough. It's more than enough. It's everything. That should put everything else in perspective for us. We have no right to be ungrateful. Christ DIED for us. Anything else we get is just because He loves us and delights in us and sings over us. How dare we ask for more. We are so arrogant sometimes to think we know best when we know nothing. And, truthfully, it doesn't matter if we know anything at all so long as we know Him.

Praise God He wants to know us.