Cardinal

"You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5:48


I have nothing on the windows on the back of my house. First floor only, of course. I like to look straight out the windows.
There is really not a house directly behind us and I figure since everybody else has blinds, why bother, they keep theirs
closed. Not like anybody is going to be seeing me run around in my skivvies.

So for the past year, there is this cardinal that drives himself into my back windows every morning. He is very loud.
He rams into our glass back door, picture window, and then goes down to our basement door to hit that glass.
For almost a whole year. Even on cold mornings. Repeatedly. Frankly we are amazed that the crazy bird is still
alive. He never looks dazed or confused. He is very deliberate at his attack. The only thing we can figure out
is that my windows are so perfectly clean (not) that he sees himself and thinks it is another bird and is trying to
defend his territory. Or he thinks my decorating abilities super-cede all other houses around here and he wants
to come live in our blissful home.

Bible study started last week at my house and Ashlie is leading it again. She is teaching about sanctification.
As I was praying about my blog, one of the things God confirmed was that I had a whole lot to learn about
sanctification, and He was about to teach me even more through an amazing teacher. Crazy enough, I knew
Ashlie was going to teach about sanctification before she introduced it last Tuesday. Love how God works.

We defined sanctification as a state of growing in divine grace, the process of being made holy by God,
resulting in a changed lifestyle. Holiness is the goal. Perfection is the end result. Perfection will never
be achieved until we are in Heaven with Christ, but that is the goal. Ashlie talked about how we are
constantly bombarded with the world by Satan to fill a craving or cravings we have to keep us from being
filled by God. Romans 6 talks about being slaves to righteousness, but verse 16 says that we are slaves
to the one we obey, either sin, which leads to death, or obedience, which leads to righteousness.

Which brings me back to the cardinal. Day after day, we drive ourselves into windows. Why do we repeat
the same sins over and over again? Six years ago I started praying that God would peel off my flesh so there
is less of me and more of Him. Six years later, I am still praying that prayer because my flesh was deeper
than I could ever imagine. Some of my flesh issues are exactly the same ones I have been dealing with.
Some have been peeled, only to reveal a deeper root.

Some of us haven't even began to be peeled.
Some of us are banging our heads against windows trying to solve things ourselves.

The window is clear. The answer is through it. The window is open. Let's stop running into it. Because
ultimately, like the cardinal, sometimes all we see is ourselves. If the bird couldn't see himself, he would
stop running into the window.

It is my prayer that we would have the desire to be made holy. That we would let Christ's righteousness
fill our craving. That we wouldn't run into the windows of this world, but continue on to the goal of perfection
that Christ desires and calls us to. That we would constantly be filled with the Word of God......

May the only thing we would drive ourselves into would be HIM, His WORD, His LIFE...... constantly.