Forty Days Full - An Invitation To Real Life

like a toilet. This is not the good I see described in the Bible. The Good News really is great news! In Christ I have become a different kind of person. When Jesus forgives us, we are truly forgiven. It is not a mere covering over the corruption. He eradicates the guilty verdict against us, making us free. He who the Son sets free, is free indeed. When Holy Spirit comes inside us, the divine nature of God takes up residence. God who is good brings the beauty of His goodness to us. He begins the process of transforming us in our inner man. This very good God starts scouring away the sludge of darkness just by the nature of His presence. The life we live is not a battle between two equal powers that compete against one another. We are made new by the power of Christ’s resurrection and our old nature is dead. In fact, Paul instructs us in Romans to consider ourselves dead to sin. This is what it takes to enter this new life. I have a 5-year-old golden retriever. Her name is Daisy and she is a very good dog. In fact, my feeling is that she is the best dog in the world. I tell her that all the time. We are very devoted to each other and love to spend time together. She is most excited whenever I come home. She will jump up and down with joy just at my presence. She loves to ride in my car. She loves the water and will get wet whenever given the chance. But most of all she loves to retrieve her ball. It gives me great joy to watch her run as fast as she can to catch the ball on the first bounce. But there are sometimes when she doesn’t display perfect obedience. Her nose gets her in trouble. She loves to smell things. She can get distracted by something that smells intriguing to her, like something that has died. It’s disgusting because she likes to roll on top of dead things, and it makes her smell bad. At times like this, when I call her to come, she doesn’t come. Does this make her a bad dog? Nine times out of ten, she’ll come on the run. Even though she gets distracted,