Not My Words

I was reminiscing with a friend I met in the summer of 2002 while on summer team. We chatted about camps, teammates and good friendships. It made me miss Amy from Brothers Keeper. So I stopped by her blog to let her know I was thinking of her and I found this great post:

Last week at GEMS I had a wonderful opportunity to (I hope) pass on what I've been learning about jealousy and the gospel. We were talking about memorizing God's Word, and our leader asked the girls if they could think of a situation in which knowing the Bible could help them. One of the girls mentioned that she had been jealous because two of her friends were excluding her. She said she could look up verses that say, "Don't be jealous." Then she paused, and candidly admitted: "But I still feel jealous, though."

What a perfect illustration of how all attempts to conquer sin without applying the gospel are shallow--they do not have the power to inspire us and make us more like Christ! If I am struggling with jealousy, and so I memorize a verse that tells me "thou shalt not covet," how does that help me to overcome the jealousy? I already knew that my jealousy was wrong…

You can find the rest of her post here.