"Cooking Lesson"

A little background...Bro. Kent has been preaching from the 6th chapter of Romans the past few weeks.  As we've moved through the chapter, we keep coming back to verses 1 and 2 (kind of like when you are camping, and you go out hiking every day, but you keep coming back to the campsite :)):

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

We've been reminded over and over that Paul wrote these verses knowing that there would be people who would take the previous teaching on salvation by grace alone through faith in Jesus and try to turn it into a license to sin:  "Well, if God's glory is shown through the forgiveness of sin by grace, then the more we sin, the more God's grace and glory are shown...so we should just keep sinning!"  

As Bro. Kent says, Paul is emphatic here...using a double negative in the Greek...in saying, "Absolutely not!"   That is not the purpose of grace at all.  Just because God provides that forgiving grace doesn't mean we need to go looking for extra opportunities to see Him exercise it! 

A little more background:)...In addition to her recent obsession with all things Spanish, Emlyn has also in the last few months become obsessed with all things medical.  She feels very strongly that God wants her to be a medical missionary someday.  It would be easy to say, "She's only nine..." and dismiss the idea...but knowing her as I do, and having watched what God has done in her life already, I can see it as a definite possibility.  So we are asking God for direction in following this "bent" for now, and watching to see what He is going to do from here. 

So...last week Emlyn took her birthday money (which she's been carefully saving for a month), and bought a huge first aid kit at Sam's.  It has all kinds of cool stuff in it, and she has been very careful to make sure her siblings know that it is NOT to play with...it is so she is prepared when someone needs help.  She has already had several opportunities to practice her "first aid", and she is very serious about it. 

So this morning...Bayley and I were cooking, and she started to do something...I don't even remember what now...to which I responded, "Be careful...you'll burn yourself!"  Her immediate reply was, "Oh, it's okay, Emlyn has burn ointment in her medical kit."  

I had to laugh...and then I immediately flashed back to the past few weeks' Sunday morning sermons...as I said, "Just because Emlyn HAS burn ointment doesn't mean you need to look for opportunities to NEED it."  

It's so easy to laugh at the absurdity of "I'll just go ahead and burn myself...we've got burn ointment," and yet often we don't see the same absurdity in our {perhaps rarely voiced, but nonetheless often lived} "It doesn't really matter that much if I sin...after all, I can ask God's forgiveness later" philosophy of grace.  

Just as I make every effort to avoid burning myself, while at the same time being quite thankful for the burn ointment when my clumsy side shows through and I end up burning myself anyway, so should I make every effort to avoid sin...to flee temptation...while at the same time being so thankful for God's grace to forgive when I do fall.  

I'm thankful for God's "teachable moments" with me, especially when they are "teachable moments" I can share with my children.    Who would have thought there was such a lesson in a little tube of burn ointment?