Drop the Rock                                                                      Go to:  www.SeniorARK.com

My mother's example of Christian faith has played a significant role in any positive impulse I have ever shown in this world. I can see her standing at the kitchen sink whistling one of her favorite hymns. On a good day she would stand there and just sing them out loud. Some of the dishes in that sink must have come very clean with the determined attention they received. I remember her placing her hands on me when I was very small, asking God to heal me from a malady I had at the time. He did. She was kind to a fault, generous with what little she had to give, slow to anger, quick to lift up, and slow to put down. She was a good woman, and God blessed this earth with her for 94 years.
 

And yet, this shining example of what Christ can do in a life, had a nagging doubt in her quiet moments. On more than one occasion she expressed a concern she had; that God might feel she "was not good enough". Oh, she understood that we have all gone astray like sheep in a flock. And she understood that God sent his Son Jesus to die for the
sin that we universally experience. She knew that she could not earn favor with her redeemer by the things she did. And yet, will God think I'm "good enough". She was carrying that "rock" around on her back, and in spite of all she knew or believed, she could not "drop the rock".
 

And I wonder if the rest of us who call ourselves the washed, the redeemed in Christ, don't carry a bit of this rock too. That nagging guilt that drags along behind us. The weight of sins past that still cling to us like superglue. Some part of us still feels that when we stand before the judgment seat of God, we will be pronounced a failure, a sinner, "guilty as charged". We just haven't made the grade. St Paul cried out in anguish one day saying something like, "Who will deliver me from this body of death? The things that I want to do, I don't do, and the things that I don't want to do, that is exactly what I do."
Paul felt the weight of that rock from time to time. And so do I. Do you?
 

It's time that we, once and for all, drop the rock. Release it. Let it go. We are not meant to have that burden. When the rock was rolled from the tomb, it was also taken off our backs. The weight of sin is not for the Christian to carry. Jesus removed every last milligram of it. More on this next week: "How to Drop the Rock"
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"My faith looks up to Thee, Thou lamb of Calvary, Savior divine.

Now hear me while I pray, Take all my guilt away,

Oh, let me from this day, be wholly Thine."
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PRAYER: Father, how can we comprehend that we no longer carry the guilt of our failings? And yet we know what the scriptures teach us. Help us to internalize the significance of what Jesus did for us in a way that sets us free. We pray this in the name of the one who is our advocate, Jesus. Amen
 

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