{"id":17,"date":"2004-10-09T08:47:47","date_gmt":"2004-10-09T14:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/?p=18"},"modified":"2004-10-09T08:47:47","modified_gmt":"2004-10-09T14:47:47","slug":"fearing-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/?p=17","title":{"rendered":"Fearing God"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was having a conversation with a friend this week about someone I work with. I struggle a lot<\/em><\/strong> working with this person. His actions and attitudes grate against my sense of honesty and justice, and I have a great<\/em><\/strong> dislike for him because of it. I was going to ‘have’ to apologize to this person for something I had done. My friend asked me why I ‘had’ to. He was challenging me on whether this ‘having to’ was a ‘living by the law’ thing or whether it was a desire to reconcile thing. I told him it was because I know that when I have done something wrong I need to apologize. My friend pressed me further and I responded with: “I need to do it because I fear God.”<\/p>\n

And my friend said, “If you feared God, you would love this person.”<\/p>\n

OUCH! That stung! Why? Because I know my friend is right. I have neither loved God nor feared Him because I have harboured animosity and hatred in my heart for this person. But, oh, loving him is so hard! In my eyes, this person’s actions & attitudes may him so incredibly ‘unloveable’. He is unrighteous!!<\/p>\n

I’m realizing that I have believed I am more deserving of God’s love than this person because I am more righteous. Which I know is completely untrue; I am no more deserving of God’s love than any other person. And I’m only beginning to realize how deep my stubbornness and pride goes in this area. But I also know it needs to go much deeper because I haven’t been cut to the heart by the conviction of my sin yet. I desire to repent and I have repented in this area before, but have I truly repented? How can I honestly repent when I haven’t grasped the ugliness of my sin? So, Lord, show me (no matter how painful it will be), so I can turn and walk a different path.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was having a conversation with a friend this week about someone I work with. I struggle a lot working with this person. His actions […] Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/songofjoy.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}