traffic lights

hello! its been a while. i kind of forgot about it and maybe i didn't have that much to say or was too lazy to say it.

while i was driving to hannah's house to pick up my lost but soon to be found cellphone, i was thinking of how many stop lights there are. so many darn stoplights. if i happen to be stuck behind a stoplight though, i always want to be first in line so that there are no cars in front of me to get in my way. yeah i know, pretty impatient, selfish, me first! mentality huh. which got me thinking...what IS the point of stoplights? well duur tiffany, it's to let other cars go too, you might say. but it also serves another purpose: to separate the long stream of cars so that the distance between each car doesn't get too short, causing traffic jams, collisions, and impatient tempers. If it was always green light then pretty soon it would be a whole line of bumper to bumper cars, honking horns, and cars shifted to park in the middle of streets. given, that already happens, but stop lights try to minimize it as much as possible.

in the same (or similar) light, if God always gave us the green light on our desires, think of how much in a jam we would really be. what comes to mind are relationships. say two people like each other a lot and start going out. months down the line however, they find that maybe they had less in common than they thought, they weren't spurring each other on towards Christ, and that connection they had or they had imagined existed between them is not quite there anymore. yet, you've spent months with this person, investing your time and energy and emotions. you don't want to let it go. but what if you keep going? this relationship that is leading no where but selfishness keeps you from giving it up. and sooner or later you're stuck in a jam--sort of like a traffic jam. but if we could listen to God more...stop when He says stop even though we so badly want to go. Wait when He says wait even though every fiber within us wants to leap forward. To listen doesn't just take discipline. It takes transformation...a transformation of hearts, which Christ does for us when we become Christians and begin our path of sanctification.

right now i'm reading Putting Amazing Back into Grace by Michael Horton, and he's tackling the much debated predestination issue.

"If the will is no more than an expression of character, it will never choose something contrary to the character of the chooser. Hence, our Lord's remark to the Pharisees, 'You are unable to hear what I say. You beling to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire' (John 8:43-44) You really want to obey the one to whom you are bound. That is the point. If God left you to yourself to decide whether you would choose or reject him, you would always refuse God as long as you 'belong to your father, the devil.'...I thank God every day that Jesus is not "a gentleman" who lets me have my own way."

I guess i had never really thought of it that way. If we had our own way we would never choose God because we were born sinners and we are bound to that. It is only by God's grace that he gave us a will to seek him instead of sin. it is only by God's grace that we are saved and nothing more. to believe in predestination is giving up any belief that humans did anything to make their way to God. it takes the power from humanity (as if we had any in the first place) and puts it into the hands of God, and rightly so.