Cheerfully in Christ

notyouraveragelooser sideblog

[the-soul-doctor]

[restbeyondtheriver]

Joseph running from Potiphar’s wife has always been painted to me as an incredibly heroic act not just against sin, but from a sinful woman.  I almost forget Joseph had spent his life in exile, in pain, with no opportunity to be with women.  I can almost forget how tempting Potiphar’s wife would have been to him.  Would she not have seemed like a consolation in the moment?  When stopping to think about that level of temptation, it is heroic in a new sense to me.

He took no time to answer her.  He didn’t even take time to be cordial, appropriate, to make her feel less embarrassed or angry at his rejection.  He just ran.

I wonder if Satan came to him the way he does to me when I react purely out of self-preservation.  Couldn’t you have handled it less impulsively?   Couldn’t you have handled better, less like a coward?

Except holiness is the standard for what is good.

It’s okay to run from sin.  It’s good to run from it.  It’s good to run from the sin in someone else that is directed at you.

The more times I read it, the less Potiphar’s wife seems full of some arbitrary evil.  How appealing Joseph’s goodness that was deeper than his appearance must have been to her.  She just seems lonely & lustful.  She sounds like someone who wants a void filled by something other than God.

She sounds like me in weak moments.  She’s repetitive & frustrated & demanding & willing to point fingers at someone else for her own actions.  She sounds like me.  I wish she was talked about more in a way that didn’t sound so vilified or dirty I can’t recognize her as a person.  It makes it seem like the right thing to do is dismiss her entirely, but it isn’t.

Sometimes sin for me just sounds like, “This.  I’ll rest in this instead.”  It just sounds like her.  “Come lie with me.”

It’s even okay to run from my own sin.  It is okay to look directly at my own ability to be blind at what I struggle with.  To look at myself head on. Sometimes I don’t think I know that.  It would be okay to be silenced, to run away from something if I am leaving to go to God.

[rachelmellema]

“Answering a student’s question, ‘Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?’ thus, It is more a question with me whether we, who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.”

— Charles Spurgeon

[rachelmellema]

“An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy.”

— C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man.

[rachelmellema]

“I am perfectly convinced that whatever the gospels are they are not legends. Christ bent down and scribbled in the dust with His finger. Nothing comes of this. No one has based any doctrine on it. And the act of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is purely a modern art.”

— C. S. Lewis

[faith-avenue]

[justabrneyedgirl]

👏👏👏

[eternal-echoes]

“We all want peace. It is desired above all by those who suffer its absence. We can speak with splendid words, but if there is no peace in our heart, there will be no peace in the world. With zero violence and 100 percent tenderness, let us build the evangelical peace that excludes no one. Let us pray together that the language of love and dialogue may always prevail over the language of conflict.”

— Pope Francis

[recovery-with-jesus]

[xx6emo6girl6xx]

[restbeyondtheriver]

“Rest is not a lack of action– it is a presence of an attitude. Rest is an inner reality that comes from a deep conviction that God is with us. When we are convinced that ‘it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me,’ we lose the pressure in life to rely on our own strength and efforts. Instead we find freedom to rely on His effort in and through us.”

— Phil Drysdale (via godsradicaldaughter)

[faithprayers]

God is preparing you…

[relatablepoetryandquotes]

“Being a successful person is not necessarily defined by what you have achieved, but by what you have overcome.” - Fannie Flagg (via quotemadness)

via @quotemadness

[skveek]

isaiah 54:10

[rachelmellema]

“People ask me, ‘Why pray if God is sovereign?’ I respond, ‘Why pray if He isn’t?”

— Michael Horton (via heartcrymissionary)

[alistairradley]

“The gospel is so simple that small children can understand it, and it is so profound that studies by the wisest theologians will never exhaust its riches.”

— Charles Hodge

[goodnewsfeedorg]

❝we ɴeed ɴever ѕнoυт αcroѕѕ тнe ѕpαceѕ тo αɴ αвѕeɴт ɢod. нe ιѕ ɴeαrer тнαɴ oυr owɴ ѕoυl, cloѕer тнαɴ oυr мoѕт ѕecreт тнoυɢнтѕ❞ -A.W. Tozer https://ift.tt/2NgtdnE

[recovery-with-jesus]