Soli Deo Gloria

The moment I clicked "Publish Post" my phone rang.  Dear Hubby on the other end asked how I was doing, to which I promptly answered, "Sinful, Hopeless, in need of Christ."  I went a whole day after that feeling convicted, like a failure as a Christian, knowing that I, to refer to my own pen, would never "really want holiness."  I am a failure.  I am, dare I say?, a black-hearted sinner. As I chose, almost 24 hours later, to really confess this to my Savior, it hit me - The Gospel!  This is The Gospel!   Not that I would reach a holy state of my accord and effort, wanting with my whole heart to serve Him, " but [that] God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses , made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurabl

As I lay here with my son at 5:30 in the a.m., cuddling a wide-awake three-year-old back to sleep, my mind is flooded with friends' cyber comments and blogs about profound discoveries through their trials throughout the recent days and seasons of their lives.  I hearken back to one of my blog entries regarding how wimpy my generation is and think about how struck my friends and I are with the audacity of Suffering taking up residence in our homes. The many Facebook comments I read from other moms about the challenges of parenting, my Facebook comments about the challenges of parenting, other friends posting about profound trials and struggles, and even the many who admit they are surprised by God's sovereign plan in those trials, take me aback with shame for my generation's narcissistic outlook. Yet, the fact that God is not leaving us to our narcissism - that He is changing our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, exposing our hearts to true joy by wounding our spirit