freely justified

 Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for your grace and mercy.  Help me to live my life in light of both of those things today.  Amen.

Scripture: Romans 3:21-26

Journal: How do you try to justify your existence?  What would living in response to the free justification offered through Jesus look like?

Reflection:  Who, or what, determines the purpose, the path, and the pace of your life?  Are you living life trying to justify your own existence, trying to prove to yourself and your world that you are worth loving, or are you living your life in response to having already been fully and freely and unconditionally loved by Jesus?  There is a huge difference.

Nowadays, it seems like we have allowed our culture and our world to determine these things—particularly our pace—rather than our God.  For some odd reason, we tend to take a lot of pride in how busy we are, in how full our schedules are, and how fast-paced our lives have become.  Bigger and more and faster have become the top measurements of success and worth and value, even in the Christian culture, much to God’s chagrin, I am afraid.  It seems that we have forgotten that life was always intended to be the result of the overflow of the life of God within us.  And the life of God within us requires time and space and silence and breath to grow and flourish.

We must, therefore, return to the ways and the values of the kingdom.  We must recapture a life that is not constantly trying to justify its existence, but one that is a living response to having already been freely and fully justified by the love and grace of Jesus.  We need to live in the joy and the power and the freedom and the overflow of the life of God that is welling up within us.  That is the way life, and ministry, was designed to work.  For when we have nothing to prove, we are finally free to love.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Thank you, Lord Jesus, that I no longer have to justify my own existence because you have fully and freely justified me.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.