The Joy of Your Salvation

So, it has been a while. One might say too long in fact. That someone, by the way would be me. I have forgotten how therapeutic this whole blogging thing is. So, one of my new additions to my list of ways in which I need to be more disciplined is to blog more. So, here it goes....

Psalm 51:12 makes the statement, "return me to the joy of your salvation." This statement made by the psalmist has been haunting me for a long time now. I say haunting because, honestly, I don't understand it. I have been trying to and I think I know what it means to me (which by saying I have quite possibly made a large hermeneutical error). Well, I know what I think it means to a lot of people. Lets be real honest with ourselves....we forget what God has done for us. I mean, I was seven years old when I began my relationship with Christ, I remember being excited and wanting to do great things for the kingdom. I remember me and my friends wanted to invite people to church and provide them with information in the process. What did we do? We made brochures copying and pasting things about our church on to large sheets of paper (now I mean literally copying and pasting). We wanted to do something for God.

Fast forward....last summer was the first time in a long time (maybe since those first few months after my salvation) I could feel God using me in a mighty way. I mean it was an everyday thing. I would talk to a friend and she would tell me I was different. I was glad. I needed to be different. She basically told me that would change when I got back. I didn't want that to happen. I wanted to continue to work for Christ and to change.

Boy did I change, the work part was a little more difficult......If I had to chart the changes in my life in the last year I could point to one single event. Confession time. At our annual Ministry Team Leadership retreat we had a time of corporate confession where we all took time to confess with the group some of our deepest, darkest sin. I held back. I always do. I don't want other people to know I mess up and I am pretty sure no one has sin problem like I do (which the whole experience proved that notion wrong). After a lot of prayer, journaling and reading through scripture that night and into the next day I knew what I had to do...confess. I did to two of my closest friends on the way back home. Did it change me? Unbelievably so. Did it fix my sin? No.

The school year went on....I had my first girl friend (which I should probably reflect on in a post all by itself), for the first time I knew what accountability was, I was learning slowly and surely to be transparent because life is to short not to be, and honestly I went through after having two of the biggest spiritual boosters in my life one of the darkest times in my life. A lot, went on internally and a lot of confusion. I depended too much on those around me and not enough on the one who gave me life. Typical.

So, what's the point. The point is all these experiences made me have joy in God's salvation. They made me take stock of my life and realize what Christ did and how much grace he really had to extend to me. It was a lot, by the way. But, they were all short lived because they were very situationally based. They didn't carry over because I wasn't committed enough. Honestly, it shouldn't take some special event for me to bask in the joy of God's salvation. I should wake up renewed and refreshed everyday thinking of how great a God I serve and how deep my sin is and yet how merciful and might the Savior is. The fact that God himself dwells inside of me and works in the world I live in. All of this is reason to never loose the joy of your salvation.

Thoughts?
Advice?