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I’m pretty sure you have these moments.

• you feel crabby to start out with. (starting with a bad attitude never helps)
• You start thinking negatively about someone or an event.
• You choose the high road ahead of time and make the decision to be positive once you encounter the situation
• you arrive and do exactly the opposite of what you’ve been just contemplating, promising, and even panning to do.

Today, God pointed out Romans 7:21.  I actually kinda laughed when I read it. 

v.21 “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.”

Paul, this week, I related to you all too well.  It is incredible frustrating to rationally, calmly think out the proper , God honoring, course of action and then fail so miserably.

Can you relate?

At least we can have confidence that there is always hope.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37

When I was a child and living at home, I remember getting grounded, spanked, chastised, given the “you disappoint me line” when I “talked backed” to my parents.  I course then proceeded to pout and rationalize that they just didn’t know what was best for me. Besides telling a lie, talking back was a definite “no, no” in the Herbold household.  Now that I have kids of my own, and I love them to pieces, but there are very few things that can upset me as quickly as them talking back to me. And afterwards they of course pout just like I did when they don’t get their way. I realize I have a serious lack of patience, and God is using them to work on me, but seriously, sometimes I feel like putting my head, or someones, through a wall. (I said I feel like that, not that I actually do that to anyone. )

While reading in Romans 9 today God reminded me that I sometimes, just as my kids, pout, and talk back to God when i don’t get my way.  Romans 9:20-24.

“But who are you O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, “why did you make me like this?”

I am so thankful that He is much more patient with me than I am with my kids.  I’m working on it with His  help and strength and asking for forgiveness from Esther and Judah as I walk this journey with them. Most days I think that I am learning more about life from parenting than my kids are by my parenting.

What is God saying to you?

Here is the same passage taken from the Message. (This helps view the passage in a slightly different light)

Who in the world do you think you are to second-guess God? Do you for one moment suppose any of us knows enough to call God into question? Clay doesn’t talk back to the fingers that mold it, saying, “Why did you shape me like this?” Isn’t it obvious that a potter has a perfect right to shape one lump of clay into a vase for holding flowers and another into a pot for cooking beans? If God needs one style of pottery especially designed to show his angry displeasure and another style carefully crafted to show his glorious goodness, isn’t that all right?