I woke up on my own without an alarm this morning and it was glorious! I don't particularly like alarms... Mine is my phone buzzing next to my head... but chances are, if you call me in the middle of the night, I'll answer it... or I'll ignore it because I think it's my alarm! haha
I'm going to try to go to bed early tonight. I sure hope it works. I've been going to bed after 11 for too many nights in a row and it's catching up to me. I don't want to get sick (like H and my dad...) so I've been drinking lots of water and now I'm going to attempt going to bed earlier. And if I go to bed earlier, I'll be able to get up earlier and still get more sleep!
I don't like the first bowl of Raisin Bran... there tends to be a dearth of raisins. (I love the word dearth. It's just fun to say...)
Okay. I'm assuming that this week we're supposed to read Romans 7&8. Just because we read 1&2, 3&4, 5&6 in the weeks leading up to this. So I'm going to take it as a pattern and go with it!
Romans 7:1-6
1Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to men who know the law—that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? 2For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.
I imagine two people literally bound together. Like by the wrists. Then I imagine the bond being cut when he dies. It's a vivid picture in my mind. This picture represents us and the law. We are bound to the law while we are alive. But once we die (and not really die (we'll get to that in a second)) we are no longer "bound" to the law. It's kind complicated and I'm not sure that even I get it. But it works for now.
3So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.
So it's okay for a woman to get married again after her husband dies. Not okay to get married while he's still alive. But once he dies, she is released from the law of marriage. Interesting.
4So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.
We died to the law when Christ died for us and we believed that Christ died for us. We believe this so that we "might bear fruit to God"/enlarge his kingdom/share our faith with other people. I have something to admit. Sharing my faith with other people scares me. A lot. But it's so important. I'll go into this a little bit more in my next post (which is going to be notes from last night's Encounter62)
5For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.
I look at this and go "huh???" because our sinful passions were aroused by the law??? It's so confuzzling. BUT it isn't really that confusing. Thinking about it, if there is no law, there is no sin. But when you put restrictions on something, isn't that the thing you want to do the most?
6But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
So we've been released from the law. Does that mean we shouldn't obey it at all anymore? Nooo. We should still uphold the law (Romans 3:31- Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold it.) We still uphold the law. But we aren't bound to it anymore. Make sense?
I decided that this post was getting too long to do last night's Encounter62 notes here, but I'm going to post that later today (tonight probably... heh.).
That post might also be published on a website called LiveGrounded.
LiveGrounded is a website to Engage, Equip, Empower, and Encourage teenagers and young adults. A friend in Cleveland started it and asked if anyone would be interested in doing devotionals, and I think that what was said last night at Encounter would be a good Empowerment tool. So you can click over to LiveGrounded and check out the specifics. It's really cool! (If you're interested in doing a devotional (you don't have to do multiples!), let me know and I can connect you with the right person!)
Hope you have a fantastic Monday! (I know I'm looking forward to mine!)
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