"But the beauty of grace is that it makes life unfair"

Monday nights have somehow become Bible study night for me.  I was really missing having that, and God answered prayer in a big way when these two came into my life.  They both have qualities that I was looking for-unspoken requests, if you will.  Love it.

Anyway, for one of my Bible studies, we are studying the book of Philippians.  The leader has a pretty formatted way to do this, but I really like the structure and formality of it.  I feel like I am going to pick up things in the text I've never seen before.  However...this requires some preparation for each week.  This past week completely got away from me, and, well, I somehow never got around to doing the questions until about 10 minutes before we started tonight.  I've been meaning to all week and was really looking forward to sitting down and digging into these verses.  I felt awful about not having it done, and while it doesn't seem like a big deal...it kind of is.  As I was driving towards school tonight, I was making up all sorts of excuses in my head of why I didn't have it done, and the predominant ones were along the lines of "Well, it isn't for a grade and my homework is..." and "I've been busy" and "School work kind of came first."  Granted, it isn't that big of a deal, and my leader wasn't upset or anything...but as I was creating these excuses, I feel like God was whispering replies right back to me tonight.  My train of thought was somewhere along the lines of "It isn't for a grade, therefore it doesn't affect my GPA, and doesn't affect my future..."  But wait.  God stopped me right there.   Where did I get so turned around in life that college GPA comes before my relationship with God?  That has a significantly larger impact on my future than my GPA EVER will...and thank God for that, with how this semester is going!  I am completely turned around in life...but the beauty of God is He can turn us back around.  I have gotten away from putting my relationship with God first, and that saddens me and disappoints me greatly, because nothing is more important than that.  Granted, I don't have to do anything to earn my salvation, but I'm not reflecting the love my Creator shows me if I don't spend time developing my relationship with Him.  It's time to get back to Him, to run back to His arms.  Keep me accountable, friends...I cannot do this on my own.  It's easy when we don't hear His voice clearly to drift away from the things that will allow us to maintain a close relationship with Him.  So this blog post is a reminder to myself in the future that GOD is the center of my life-am I treating Him as such?


BTW...tonight's title is from Relient K's "Be My Escape."  Funny part is, as I was just typing in the title box trying to create a post, that's what came out.  Oddly appropriate lyrics for where I'm at right now.  Thanks God. :)
 
I gotta get outta here
I’m stuck inside this rut that I fell into by mistake
I gotta get outta here
And I’m begging You, I’m begging You, I’m begging You to be my escape.

I’m giving up on doing this alone now
Cause I’ve failed and I’m ready to be shown how
He’s told me the way and I’m trying to get there
And this life sentence that I’m serving
I admit that I’m every bit deserving
But the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair


This is just a sampling of the lyrics-check out the full lyrics here.