SAVING ROOM FOR...

I remember as a kid this was a big deal with my mother. It always was about not eating too much for dinner so you could save room for dessert. That sort of conveyed the idea of dessert being a reward for a feeble attempt at self-control. I say feeble because whenever that got said, I knew there was going to be a great dessert waiting. The idea got me so excited that I ended up eating even more dinner. I still go the dessert though, which made the whole idea of saving room for later rather less than one I took serious in terms of eating less.

Self-control is a wonderful thing in some ways. The illusion of having power is always soothing to the ego. I have come to appreciate that in reality so many times self-control truly is only an illusion. So we end up just having to lie to ourselves in order to not cope with those weaknesses that remind how we are mortal after all.

In the spiritual realm, part of faith to me is trusting to God for his strength and power to deal with situations. Not that we aren’t suppose to deal with our problems, but that there are times when we are our own worse enemies in terms of improvement.

Of course in many ways I think sin in our lives is part of the consequence of our weaknesses. It also is many other things, but still we do know, despite what some claim, that none of us is perfect. Nor in this life will we ever become perfect.

This doesn’t keep some from living in denial in terms of “saving room for” righteousness if you will. They are in the stage of living a life, from their point of view, where they don’t sin. With extreme cases such people actually think they have stopped sinning. It all becomes a sad game without any real winner.

What amazes me is the person in this game who somehow gets so comfortable with a given sin that hey stop even regarding it as a sin. That is hard for my mind to understand.
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I’ve had to deal with this one person in a given situation for several months. The one thing I have come to appreciate, sadly, is that this person is a hopeless compulsive liar. I can’t think of a single time the person has told the truth. Even when confronted by a glaring lie the person never changes.

The other day I had to meet with this person and the individual was wearing a sweatshirt with the name of Jesus on it. It really amazed me. I mean anyone is entitled to approach God’s throne of grace and forgiveness in faith. I don’t have any problem with that aspect.

However, I did have trouble on appreciating how this person with such a history of lying felt claiming to be a Christian was in any way going to bring honor to the Lord. I guess it was unrealistic to expect the person to have been embarrassed enough by such habitual sin so as to been a little more humble in that area.

For some people the “save room for” rationale will be a blanket of excuse they will always wear. Hopefully for those willing to honestly listen to God’s spirit we will find more reason to save room for grace and forgiveness rather than another helping of lies.