Jen Russum

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Flowers Fade Friday: Radical

I run around in my little life doing my own thing… cleaning my house, making dinner, coffee with friends, reading for school, dates with husband, fights with husband, buying new clothes, feeling overwhelmed, feeling relaxed, feeling content, feeling discontent…

And the truth of the matter is, I have a good life. I love the Lord. I try to love others well. I try to use my gifts for the glory of God. I try to repent from sin and live in obedience.

But when I enter into God’s Word. When I really read those letters, black and red, gracefully etched across those thin wispy pages, I realize that the life God has called me to looks radically different than my life right now.

It’s not so much that I’m doing it all wrong. I think my relationships and tasks at this point in my life are pretty much on par with God’s calling for me. It’s that the heart behind the cleaning and the grocery lists and the friendships and the date nights is sometimes so… off.

My heart is often so far from beating to the rhythms of God’s grace. So far from pumping life-giving blood into my life and lives of others.

I look at Romans 12:9-12, which says:

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.

I am not trying to have a pity party here. I’m not thinking “Oh, look at me. I’m so depraved. I can do nothing right.” No, God’s grace is too huge and lavish for that. Although I am absolutely and utterly depraved without Christ, I am a redeemed woman. I live life in the Spirit by the power of the Cross, and although I stumble around in this fleshly body now, my eyes are fixed on heaven.
So this is not a “look at what a horrible Christian I am” post. This is a LOOK what God can do in me post. Even though I am redeemed now, there is so much work to be done. God wants to give me a radically different mind and heart than I have right now. He wants to continue to transform me. He has the power to teach me to love more genuinely than I do right now. To abhor evil more than I do right now. He has the power to weave his grace into my days that I might show others honor instead of worrying about how I might be esteemed. He can renew my zeal each day, so I don’t approach His words or His people with an apathetic or exhausted look on my face or feeling in my heart. He can teach me to be patient in tribulation instead of always hurrying along in my life, trying to control and solve problems on my own in the quickest way possible. He can teach me the joy that comes from constant prayer and reliance on Him. He can teach me to serve Him eagerly, without wondering when I can get back to my own to-do list.
I want this radically different life. Although it might not look that different on the outside, I want the gentleness and love of the Spirit to seep through all I do and say. I want a genuine love, one that strives to show honor, to drip from my tasks and my words and my thoughts. And He can do it. God, will do it. He has promised to continue to transform me and carry me to completion. I long for it and I hope you do too. Give us radically different lives, Lord.

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