As I walk over the hopscotch that’s permanently painted on a sidewalk where my husband and I walk frequently, I cannot help it, everything in me wants to go “out, one, two, out, one, two, three.” I do it in my head even if I don’t hop through it.
I believe it is ingrained in me and comes back to me the minute I see that we’re getting near it. The amazing thing is how the mind and body remember something I haven’t thought about for a LONG time.
The same day I gave in and hopped through it, I was in a study group. A woman who has been a faithful Christian for a really long time talked about using bad language. She said it comes to her mind when she gets aggravated. That language is in her from her younger years and comes to the surface when she lets down her guard. I knew just what she was talking about.
Not having come to faith in Jesus Christ and truly wanting to obey His commands until I was almost 40, I have a lot of old habits that are not godly, and knowledge of a vocabulary that I really do not want to use. But, there are also some pretty good things (even better than hopscotch) that the Lord, in His mercy, also allowed to become ingrained in my mind.
Things that come to mind are all the lessons my parents taught me about kindness, tone of voice, doing to others as I would have them to me, etc. It was all relationship stuff because I have five siblings and we all had to learn how to treat others so we could live in peace. As I became humgry for the Word of God, the Lord added His truth to my memory.
Sadly, all the good things do not outweigh the sinful things. Early in my Christian faith, the Lord showed me things like pride, greed, and a foul mouth. When these traits are part of our character it is easy to understand the sin nature or total depravity of man. Thank God the requirement for salvation is not to have the good things about us outweigh the sinful.
His condition for forgiveness is that we believe Christ’s atonement for our sins. That atonement, suffering the death we deserved for our sins, acting as our substitute, is how we can be justified before God. As proof that the atonement was effective, Christ was resurrected to life and He now sits at the right hand of God interceding for us. What a gift! But we must accept it. We must believe it.
In the scriptures we learn that God has works for us to do when He has saved us from having to take the penalty for our own sin. (Ephesians 2:8-10). Though neither hopscotch nor cuss words are things that I see how to use as ministry to others, I can see that the works God has for each one of us are most likely something that He has already started to teach us to do.
What has God been teaching you and me? Do you understand the evils of murdering infants in the womb? Are you a good communicator (speaking or writing) so you could teach others what God’s Word says about every area of life? Has He given you the financial capability to help others? How will you and I take these bodies that have been fearfully and wonderfully made, and put them, and all the stored up good stuff, and use them for God’s glory and the good of our neighbors?
