Growing up in the country we had a couple of four wheelers and some property to drive them on. I loved riding them with my brother and my friends. We would spend hours driving all over the place. There were some good things about them and some bad. The good was quality time with my brother outdoors and our four wheelers were pretty nice. There were also many awesome trails that we got to drive on. The bad was that often times Jack and I would try to make our own trials. We also had the bad habit of trying to drive them through water and places we simply shouldn't have even tried.
My dad did not like when we would break the four wheelers, get stuck, or even get them really muddy. If I was a betting man I would say this made him a little more upset than lots of things. I could write an entire book about all of the times Jack and I thought it would be funny to make some new trials or try to drive through a part of the river. We made him pretty upset and it was rightfully so.
I am not sure if you have ever gotten the chance to go four wheeling somewhere, but usually the trails are pretty easy to see. The same trails have been driven on for years and they're usually pretty nice. I don't know why we ever thought we had to make some more.
When I walk through our woods I can easily see the trials that we have had since we moved in and I can see some of the mistakes that we made when we tried to make our own. When we tried to make our own trails it never really worked out. When we made our own trails that is when we usually made a pretty costly and timely mistake. We were so used to driving on the good trails that we would forget they were there because we would remember our mistakes more times than not.
This is the same way with our good deeds vs. our sins. I feel like at times in my life I was doing everything right but I made one mistake and that is what was hung over my head. Same way with anybody though. We often forget the good that people are doing after one mistake.
A lot of the times that guilt that we feel can make us forget about all of the other good deeds we are doing. The good deeds are always going to pan out because good deeds come from people whose hearts are focused on Christ. I've done good things, and I have messed up, but those good deeds are always there and are going to continue to matter what.
It's just like the story I told you about my brother and I riding four wheelers. We knew that there were trails that we were supposed to drive on and we drove on them all the time, but when we silly and tried to do our own thing, we often forgot about the good trails that were going to be there no matter what.
The sins of some are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them. In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not obvious cannot remain hidden forever. (1 Timothy 5:24-25)
Our sins, are mistakes, and mess-ups might trail behind for a little while but the good deeds will never remain hidden forever.
Keep on doing good things my friends. We have the ability to do good things everyday with the freedom that we have in Christ. We are going to have the ability to do good things unit Christ returns and we go to heaven so keep doing good deeds before it's too late.
I know for a fact that our trails will always be in our woods, but if we go a couple years without driving down them they might become a little overgrown and filled with debris. The good will be there, we just have to keep on doing it.
No comments:
Post a Comment