Get out of the way!!!

Something that struck me powerfully this morning is where I was reading in Romans 9. It first speaks of Paul's sorrow because of his people not accepting the fact that Jesus was who he said he was. It then goes into addressing the spiritual aspect of the lineage of Abraham. I never caught it before, but there has always been a "one or the other" situation with this. In verse 7 he states that the Jews will be defined with Isaac, he then goes on to talk about Jacob and Esau and how "the older will serve the younger". So here there is a clear line of who God has chosen, but it is not based on the works performed by either Isaac or Jacob but by God who called them.

So why did this stick out to me do you ask? Simply for the fact that in both these situations there are God moments and then there are man moments. With Abraham, he took it on his own to have a son with Hagar in which Ishmael is born and the Palestinians are descended. The other is the plot to have Jacob receive the birthright from Isaac. In which he did receive so deceitfully. In both these situations, man got in the way. This is much like all of us in every way. We choose to do it our way or God's way. Nine time out of ten it is our way.

In Galatians 4:21-31 Paul addresses the slave woman versus the free woman and how we are either born to the slave woman or born to the free woman. This in a sense is a warning to us that we can either choose to live in bondage because we do it our way, or we can choose to live in freedom because we do it God's way. Initially we are all in bondage to sin, but because of what Christ did for us we are now free.

So why remain in bondage? I know that there are many reasons why one would, but maybe knowing that if we do things God's way it will bring us freedom then we will choose this more often.

I would like to start living with the moniker, "It's either God's way or the highway", rather then the other well too practiced one. May God bless you and may you not get in the way so much.