To be honest...

I tend to operate from a place of "being follows doing". I can be such a legalist. A works-based faith is where I derive comfort. This week, God used the story of the prodigal son to speak into me.

The prodigal son(s).

Two sons.
We like to think of the drug/sex addict who loses all his cash. The young son.  This son gets to the end of his inheritance only to realize that he needs to go back to his father's house as a servant. So the young son has to work to be in relationship with his father.

And then there is the older son, who, while his brother is away, works and works and works. He thinks that he can serve his father enough. The funny thing is, these two brothers look at there relationship with their father in the very same way.  They both think that they can work their way into relationship, they think they can earn their father's love, they think that there is always something that they need to do. But the Father will have none of these things. The Father won't even have the younger son finish his speech he's prepared, instead he treats him as his child- a prince. He spares no expense; he throws a party. And to the older son, the Father says that everything the father has is also his. Both the younger and the older son have a hard time coming to the party and that's how I feel.

I have a hard time coming to the party thrown for me, because I don't deserve it and this story helps me realize that its not about my doing.  It's not about what I earn. The Bible is clear that what ever I do earn can be easily taken away(Luke 12:31-21; 2nd scriptural endnote in STUDY). But God is also clear in His word through the story of the prodigal son(s) that there is nothing I can do to earn His Love. He loves me and he likes to party.

A works-based faith rooted in legalism is like a spiritual cancer in me. It prevents me from receiving the fullness of grace, intimacy and joy in God's Love and thereby inhibits the natural overflow of those things onto others and myself. Practices like study and meditation when plugged into a works-based faith produce nothing of eternal value and will die with me. It is easy to do study and meditation, but if I don't allow myself to be in study and meditation, to be in His Love (and the party), I am only enabling a disease to spread. Not only would my life be a waste(dang!), but in death I would receive the same welcome into eternity as the rich man of Luke 12(double dang!).
To be honest, I've had a hard time these last two weeks. In one part due to my struggle with trying to do study and meditation. Even as I learn to instead be in these disciplines, challenges have presented themselves, but as Andy likes to say "There is freedom in discipline". Jesus never intend us to go through life living in shame and guilt, instead to be joyous and join the party.

"For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" Matthew 11:30
 The desire to study and meditate will flow naturally from here.