Have mercy upon me, O Lord; for I am weak: O Lord, heal me; for my bones are vexed."
Psalms 6:1-2
This is something that perhaps we have all felt when coming to the Lord... please don't be mad... please help me. It sounds like something that a child would say to a parent in our mortal context as well... and loving parents, earthly or heavenly, would respond by helping.
What I was thinking about today though is that sometimes we want the relief and the freedom from consequences, but we don't want to change, or to actually make things right. We just want God to give us permission to continue to do wrong... and what we lose if we keep repeating this over and over again.
Please don't misunderstand... God is definitely willing to forgive, and is more merciful and loving than we imagine. Only, we can't be the boy who cried wolf forever, and keep doing the same thing and then pleading for repentance--not because God isn't willing to grant us another chance, but because when we are pleading for mercy but not repenting, we stay stuck in that remedial cycle. It is like taking a required class over and over again until we pass it--except every time we keep blowing it off, not doing any homework, and the result is the same. To progress, we have to pass that class. There isn't a way around it. God will keep letting us retake it, but he won't let us graduate if we merely avoid it, and the longer we delay, the longer we delay our own future. The consequences are to ourselves.
Today, let's take a hard look at our lives and the remedial classes that perhaps we have been avoiding... or failing on purpose. Let's jump in with a renewed effort and take care of those prerequisites, so that we can move on to something more advanced and likely more interesting as well. God will help us change our hearts and our minds and do what we may have previously considered impossible. We can pass with his help.
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