If you want to boast

Wednesday February 2nd, 1 Corinthians 1: 30 God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin. 31 Therefore, as the Scriptures say, “If you want to boast, boast only about the LORD.” It is when we have given up on all our intellectual and spiritual control that we open the door for Christ to come into our lives. That sounds easy enough, but there is a reason the first sin in the Bible is the temptation to be like god, knowing good and evil and all matter of things in-between. Martin Luther said the last thing to be converted to Christianity was a man’s wallet. Whereas I agree that it may be one of the last things converted, it is not the last. The last thing to be converted is the need to maintain control. Then again, maybe those two are more closely related than any of us want to admit. Child psychologists tell us that it is not uncommon to have difficulty potty training some children to have a BM in the toilet. They may be able to maintain staying dry at night but old number two is a different story. For some children it is related to giving up control and having control of their bowels is for them better than the alternative which is seen as not having control. It is only when they succumb to that control issue that they begin to experience the freedom using the toilet gives them. So it is with most of us, we hang onto out control in spite of the stink, all the time not quite grasping the freedom that awaits us on the other side where a loving, patient and coxing God awaits us.