"Passionately Seeking & Speaking the Love of Jesus Christ"
Dateline: Phillips West
I have been taking an Indonesian Martial Arts class for about four years now and have learned quite a bit from my instructor. This year it is not so much a class because he is giving me private lessons so we have begun to "dig a bit deeper." Since I am right handed, he has begun teaching me to use my left hand for everything outside the class (even menial tasks) so that I can strengthen my weakness and move ahead with the studies.
When we met last week He asked me how I was doing. I told him that my shoulder hurt from doing a ton of house painting over the weekend. As soon as I finished speaking, he looked at me and asked, "Your right shoulder hurts?" before I could even answer "yes" I knew what he was implying... I had disregarded his teaching...even to the extent of hurting myself.
Mind you, my teacher is very patient and kind. He did not scold me or put me through and rough exercises to "pay for" my disobedience. But I knew I was wrong and that was punishment enough (along with a sore shoulder) to motivate me to do better from that point on.
Every single day, every single one of us disregards God's instruction and everysingle time we do it we are hurting ourselves. Yes, He is patient and does not always scold us but that does not change the fact that we are wrong every single time we disobey Him. He wants to strengthen our weaknesses and move us ahead but we cannot do this if we keep doing only what we are comfortable with. Perhaps we need these moments of humilty and failure in order to grow. The next time you fail to obey God, what are you going to do?
