What to say,,,where to start

I've wanted to start a blog for a while.  A place to share my thoughts and experiences as I journey through life.  I'm not a great writer. I tend to share too much at times or have verbal diarrhea which leads to extensive editing. So what once was an offering comparable to an amazing, freshly baked loaf of bread is now the ancient, stale crust that is not appealing at all.  But here it goes, it'll be interesting to see where it takes me. I'm not expecting any rhyme or reason to my blog, it may be reflecting on something  currently happening or maybe a way to record past memories or experiences.

Lincoln is taking a rare morning nap so I sat down with a cup of coffee this morning and started doing some Bible study. The communion mediation yesterday at church was excellent.  It started with 1 John 3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. 

As I read the rest of the chapter it was amazing how well it tied into what our pastor spoke about yesterday in his sermon.  He was talking about speaking and living in truth and love, which can be changed to legalism and liberalism to a crippling point.  What are we going to chose to do, live to please man or live to bring glory to God? Can we do both? How do we keep that balance? One one hand we know we can't earn our way to heaven, salvation is a free gift.  So that's it, we just accept and don't need to do anything else.  We are saved, God can't love us anymore than He does now, so why do I need to change anything?

On the other hand, yes, we can't earn our way to heaven but we can use this life to reflect Christ and the Holy Spirit living in us. We can start to beat ourselves up as we try to live holy live and fail. As our pastor says Satan steps in an rains down condemnation on us instead of conviction which is of the Holy Spirit.

Where is the balance, where do truth, mercy grace and love meet? In 1 John 3 it talks about our sin nature and how as we live in and belong to Christ our life will reflect that.  If there isn't change we belong to the devil and continue to sin.  The end of the chapter sums it up best  

 John 3
18 Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions.19 Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God.
20 Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything.21 Dear friends, if we don’t feel guilty, we can come to God with bold confidence.
22 And we will receive from him whatever we ask because we obey him and do the things that please him.23 And this is his commandment: We must believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he commanded us.
24 Those who obey God’s commandments remain in fellowship with him, and he with them. And we know he lives in us because the Spirit he gave us lives in us.

Good words to meditate on and work on living out this week.  This post is much longer than I initially intended.  My quiet time lead me on number of other searches as well this morning, but I will share that at another time.