John 7: 7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil.

8:6 ....But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said the them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

Many of us do not want to see/accept Jesus for the first time, because He tells us the truth: we have sin in our lives. Sin makes us unworthy of heaven and we need a way to get there (if that is where we want to end up after this life). He is the way. But we don't want Him, because we know that if we accept Jesus this means our lives will change. We might end up like those boring Christians.

I am in love with being a boring Christian. My life has changed. I feel better about myself than I ever have in the past. And I know what my future holds (in eternity). And so, because of that knowledge and assurance of Jesus, I want to share Him. I want to love like Him. I want to see those I love coming to Him so we can walk this walk together.

I know there are still plenty of blind spots in my Christian walk, and the Lord is showing those to me. My goal is never to make someone feel condemned because of their sin. I still have sin in my own life (whether or not I recognize it) and so... I walk with Jesus, praying that He opens my heart that I can see the ways I am blind in my walk. My prayer is that He uses that blindness and my new knowledge of it to be glorified on this earth and to bring more people to Himself.

John 6: 63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. 64 Yet there are some of you who do not believe.

66 From this time many of his disciples (not the twelve) turned back and no longer followed him.

I am reading this book called "Radical," by David Platt. It was a gift I did not know I needed. Following Jesus is hard; He calls us to so many ways of life that we simply do not want to follow Him into. He wants us to share about Him, love people no matter how they behave, and to follow Him despite the fact that we may be persecuted for doing so. He wants us to do all this to glorify God. "Radical" is a reminder of the reason God created the earth and man in the first place: for His own glory. I am reminded that Jesus brought salvation not only because He loves us, but because in showing His love for us in that way, God is glorified and worshipped.

I am reminded because of this book, that if I am not worshipping God and trying to glorify Him through my life, then I am making my life about ME. Everything aside from the Lord winds up only being about how I am feeling, how well I am satisfied, what my needs are. If I am not bringing all the glory and thanks back to God, I am showing my own selfishness. I am showing that I believe I can do this life by my own works, my own ingenuity. I am showing that I am not truly a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I am desperate for God, for a relationship with Him, to love Him and know Him more. Knowing the depths of my sin and admitting that I need a Savior brought me to Jesus, God's grace for us in the flesh. I am asking the Lord to keep this desperation (longing) for Him in my heart, so that I can keep growing and knowing Him better, so that I can be more like Him and be unafraid to tell people of the reason for my hope and my lifestyle, and so that I never want to turn back from Him. I am asking that He give me a heart for His Word, the way to knowing Him. And, I am asking that He show me, here in this new place (the Azores), how I can glorify Him.