Commended and Condemned

Feelings and truth do not always coincide. A lot of the time I feel a certain way about God....but in my heart I know it isn't true. Like sometimes I feel what I do or say commends me to Him. And other times what I do or say, I feel condemns me before Him. Or the opposite. Sometimes I feel what I choose not to say  or do commends me to Him...or
What I choose not to do or say condemns me before Him.
And when I follow those feelings I run around like crazy doing this that and the other thing to stay commended and not condemned....or I sit and wallow because I have failed in one way or another and I feel condemned. And usually my response is to ask forgiveness of God over and over and OVER!

So in all reality, in life, I'm either a little stuck up brown noser....or I'm the class bully who can't seem to get his act together. That's when I'm following my feelings.

But the TRUTH is that Christ died and rose again. He bore all my condemnation, and He also is my commendation to the Father God. Because of Christ I no longer am condmned for the things I do, but also nothing I do can further commend me to God.

So let's say I die a martyr....I'm still no more commended before God than the person who lived life for himself and accepted Christ on his deathbed. The ground is level at the cross and it stays that way! This doesn't change!

I can remember back to last spring and summer when our yard was covered in Josh's nightmare: DANDILIONS! Lol! He is one of "those people" you know the ones, who notices when even one blade of grass is taller than the rest! Lol!
Anyways I remember sittin outside and watching Miriam pick them. She never brought me one but I remember thinking to myself that I couldn't wait till the day she would!
I hate flowers. Everyone who knows me well knows this. I don't like getting flowers from my hubby. I think it is a waste of time and money. But I long for a little weed from a certain little gal. Why?

It isn't the weed or even the act of her giving it to me. It is just her. It is because it is from her.
I think it is the same with God. So that it isn't what I do for Him but that I do FOR Him.
I'm already commended to Him because of His Son. So nothing I do can bring me to any better of a standing with Him. And nothing I do can bring me to any worse of a standing with Him.

However what I do or don't do can affect how close I am to Him and with Him. But it is never He that moves. It is only I. I like to think of it this way. When My hubby walks his dog Shep, the dog is attached to him by a leash.
The leash represents Christ. There's no possible way the tie can be broken between Shep and Josh. They are attached. But Shep can wander off and go after distractions. Josh never moves away...Shep moves away but Josh stays where he is at.
Waiting for Shep. Sometimes if things get really crazy and Shep is heading for a road Josh will intervene and go after Shep.

God works the same way. We know this because of the 2 illustrations of this found in His Word. In Luke 15 it talks about a sheep in trouble. It ran away and injured itself. The Shepherd went after it. However it also talks of a son who runs away and gets into trouble and the Father waits at home.
God both waits at times for us and sometimes He comes after us.


I surrender and fell surrendered and fell and surrendered and fell SO many times when it comes to my eating disorder. I would fall into it and then God would convict me and I would come back to Him and be good for a while and then back to it and the whole cycle started over again.
That was while He was waiting for
Me. But then He came after me. And that He did through a miscarriage. He moved because He saw me running away again.

There are times when I feel like my miscarriage is all of God and I think of Him as a bully (there I said it....gasp I can't believe I just wrote that...but it's true)
And I wonder how He could do that to me???!!! Especially since apparently that kind of miscarriage happens a lot. A woman gets pregnant and then before the little one can even start growing the body aborts it. But my struggle was that HE LET ME KNOW IT!

He knew I was excited about it and He knew that I had prayed and prayed and prayed for another child. So of course I took test after to test to see if I was pregnant. And finally one came out positive. I knew I was pregnant.
And before I could really let it sink in that we would be parents again...that life was snuffed out.

And at times then...and still now I'm tempted to blame God. How could He??!! How could He let it happen in the first place and how could He let me know about it? But that's only how I felt...how I still feel sometimes.

But the truth is God doesn't with hold from us ANYTHING that is for our good. He didn't even with hold His own Son from me.
He allowed that miscarriage because that is what I needed to wake me up to the fact that I needed saving from my eating big disorder. That I was beginning to head down a path once again. The path of an eating disorder.

I am no more smiled on then I was when I was drenched in my eating disorder. Sometimes I feel that because I've come so far away from my eating disorder that God now smiles
On me more than He ever has...but the truth is He smiled on my just as much when I was struggling. He doesn't change in His love for or delight in us because of what we do or don't do.

He loved me just as much as an 89 pound self absorbed girl as He does now that I'm more free from it. And that truth in and of itself is freeing yet still more! Knowing that He doesn't change in His commendation or condemnation
Is such a freeing and awesome truth! Yes choices I make will either bring ME (not Him...there is a HUGE difference there) closer to Him or further from Him. But He doesn't look down with a frown and He isn't out to get me when I sin...but He also isn't up there somehow
Happier when I do right. He can't be brown nosed, and He can't be offended so much that He moves away. You see I'm tempted to see Him like me. Like somehow God is altogether like me. He judges people and moves closer or further away from people based on what they do or say or don't do or don't say. But that is feeling not truth. God is altogether not like us!

"These things you have done, and I kept silent; You thought that I was altogether like you; ps.50:21aIt is we who move not Him. He stays the same!