Surviving Sanctification***
It started out as a few termites and within a few hours our bed, rugs, desk, floors, walls were swarming with these critters. The only words that I had were not words I cared to utter with my children present. An occasional bug here or there is tolerable; however, swarms of termites ON THE BED feels like more than I can tolerate.
Since it was late in the day on Sunday, we couldn't call maintenance...so we slept downstairs. On Monday, the kids and I moved as much as we could move from the upstairs to the downstairs to prepare for the "fumigation." It is now Tuesday afternoon, the contents of the upstairs are still strewn all over the downstairs and I just found a few more fumigation-resistant termites on our bed. I think that we will be sleeping downstairs again tonight.
On that Monday morning, before I started the work of clearing out the upstairs, I sat down with the book, My Utmost for His Highest. I started reading the previous day's devotional. The title was: "Becoming the Filth of the World." Actually, I don't think that I actually finished reading the whole thing because I got caught on the sentence: "Or you can say, 'I don't care if I am treated like 'the filth of the world' as long as the gospel is proclaimed."
I realized as I was sitting there reading that surviving the sanctifying work of the Gospel in my own life (whether that comes from the trial of termites, some other insect plague, or whatever else) is the proclamation of the Gospel.
***Sanctification is: "not perfection but a growing consistency and fervor of obedience." ~John Piper
Since it was late in the day on Sunday, we couldn't call maintenance...so we slept downstairs. On Monday, the kids and I moved as much as we could move from the upstairs to the downstairs to prepare for the "fumigation." It is now Tuesday afternoon, the contents of the upstairs are still strewn all over the downstairs and I just found a few more fumigation-resistant termites on our bed. I think that we will be sleeping downstairs again tonight.
On that Monday morning, before I started the work of clearing out the upstairs, I sat down with the book, My Utmost for His Highest. I started reading the previous day's devotional. The title was: "Becoming the Filth of the World." Actually, I don't think that I actually finished reading the whole thing because I got caught on the sentence: "Or you can say, 'I don't care if I am treated like 'the filth of the world' as long as the gospel is proclaimed."
I realized as I was sitting there reading that surviving the sanctifying work of the Gospel in my own life (whether that comes from the trial of termites, some other insect plague, or whatever else) is the proclamation of the Gospel.
***Sanctification is: "not perfection but a growing consistency and fervor of obedience." ~John Piper
