Saturday February 10, 2024

 

As we begin our journey through this NEW YEAR 2024 living in God's daily NEW MERCIES, I invite you to wander with me in pictures through one of Cartagena, Colombia's most fascinating neighborhoods: Getsemaní. Here, a huge wall mural in the heart of Getsemaní.

NEW YEAR, NEW MERCIES: DAY 11

 

It is an intensely human endeavor... We all want to feel good about ourselves... It is a fearful and anxious quest from which only grace can free you. 

Here’s what happens to us all—we seek horizontally for the personal rest that we are to find vertically, and it never works. Looking to others for your inner sense of well-being is pointless. First, you will never be good enough, consistently enough to get the regular praise of others that you are seeking. You’re going to mess up. You’re bound to disappoint... Looking to people for your inner self-worth never works. 

The peace that success gives is unreliable as well. Since you are less than perfect, whatever success you are able to achieve will soon be followed by failure of some kind...

That’s why the reality that Jesus has become your righteousness is so precious. His grace has forever freed us from needing to prove our righteousness and our worth. So we remind ourselves every day not to search horizontally for what we’ve already been given vertically.

Thank You God, that in Christ and by His grace I am freed from the pressures of seeking my success and hence my worth in myself and in the things of this world. These can only ever be found in You.

+ REFLECTIONS