I’ve reading through Proverbs right now on my journey through the Bible this year.  There is such a wealth of knowledge and great direction in this book, it is impossible to actually take it all in.  I figure I’ll do it one bite at a time each year by thinking about and meditating on one of the main ideas that Solomon talks about in Proverbs.

This year God stopped me on the section in Proverbs about righteousness.

Righteousness is an old-fashioned term that doesn’t seem to relate to my world today……until I realize it’s just ‘living right’.  Doing the right things.  Making the right decisions.  Saying the right things.

How do I know what is right?  God’s Word is right.  It’s the truth.  God himself speaks to me through the Bible, explaining it and helping me apply it to my life.  The Holy Spirit convicts me when my thinking gets off and my actions don’t reflect what I believe.

I’m so glad I have the role-model of Jesus.  I don’t have to try to look around the world and find someone I want to imitate in order to ‘live right’.  I have Jesus.  This truth has often helped me move passed major disappointments with people – especially people in the church.  I used to expect people in the church to be a lot more ‘righteous’ than others until I realized that we’re all just people, struggling with our weaknesses.  As believers, God is gradually redeeming our lives but he still has a lot of work to do.

So watching people- especially people who say they are Christians – I got confused and disillusioned.  Then I looked to Jesus.  Focused on him.  And the issues about imperfect Christians went away.

Jesus gave imperfect Christians grace and love and spoke truth at the right time into their lives.  I’m so glad because I am imperfect and this is how he treats me.

Jesus did it – it’s the right thing to do.

Thank you, Abba Father.