Pet Peeves!

Do you have a pet peeve?  You know that thing that someone does that frustrates you to no end!

 

I have a pet peeve!  It drives me insane when someone (not mentioning any names here) tracks water into the house and doesn’t bother to wipe it up and I come along in my stocking feet and step in it! 


And if I’m confessing, I might as well admit that I have a few other ones as well. . . It drives me nuts when I’ve been waiting, what seems an eternity, at a left-hand turn light only to find the person in front of me preoccupied with their phone.  Then when they finally wake up, they make a quick turn and leave me stuck at the light.

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/312490

 

The other day I was thinking about some of those things that drive me crazy and another thought caught me completely by surprise, “I wonder what pet peeves God has about me.”

 

And it got me to thinking . . .

 

Could one of His pet peeves be when He sees me continually trying to do things in my own strength instead of His? 

 

Or when He sees me judging someone else’s sin and neglecting my own.

 

I wonder what pet peeves God has about me.

 

Look at Romans 2:3-4 (The Message), “You didn’t think, did you, that just by pointing your finger at others you would distract God from seeing all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard? Or did you think that because he’s such a nice God, he’d let you off the hook? Better think this one through from the beginning. God is kind, but he’s not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change.”

 

God hates my sin!  Why?  Because it pulls me away from Him, it puts a wall between him and me. It saddens Him when I choose death over life, sorrow over joy, and a cheap trinket over His vast treasure.    

 

I confess that I find it easier to focus on the sin of others than to take a good hard look at the sin in my own life.  And if I’m honest, deep down I secretly hope that God will be distracted with other people and their sin and not look too carefully at mine.

 

It’s all too easy for me to forget that God hates my sin and to misread His silence as His blessing in my life.  

 

God wants so much more for you and me!  He desires a radical life-change through radical obedience and radical surrender, anything less and we settle for a mediocre, second rate, luke-warm Christianity.

 

Is that what God sacrificed His Only Son for?  So that you and I could live a middle-of-the road existence with Him.  Say it isn’t so!